Atul Kulkarni was recently seen in an interesting role of a cop in the Ajay Devgn-starrer web series Rudra: The Edge of Darkness. The Free Press Journal caught up with the versatile actor for an exclusive conversation. Excerpts:
Your onscreen bromance with Ajay in Rudra: The Edge of Darkness was one of the show’s highlights. How was it to work with him?
Ajay has a huge experience as an actor, director and producer. He is a good human being as well. He knows so much about technicality, filmmaking and action. When you have such people on the sets as your co-star, it can only help you.
You have always done different roles to allure the audience. Your take?
I am happy to be doing varied roles. It’s good that the audience gets to see different sides of yours. That is what is for audiences, but when the actor gets a chance to present the other side, every actor being a human being, lives it, and that’s what even I also do.
Do you think regional films, especially from the South, doing well at the box office are blurring the line?
I feel it’s absolutely untrue. You take the history of Hindi cinema; you will find actors from the South and Bengal. Actors from all over India have been and are part of Hindi films for a very long time.
Do you feel they have good writers and our writers need to reinvent?
All along, we have been having competent technicians and writers directors and writers from all over India, so comparing is wrong. For so many years, Hindi films have been exhibited all over India in the South, East, West and North. There used to be remakes like what Jeetuji (Jeetendra) used to be part of. It’s about different phases of any industry. Because of the exposure through platforms, many people are watching South Indian films now. It’s high time for us to watch films from all the other languages.
You have done a few Tamil and Telugu films in the past. When will we see you working again down South?
I have nothing right now. I don’t have any such list as I have not been offered anything. I look for storytellers when the director is narrating the story. I also look at the story to see if it’s interesting.
Isn’t social media contributing a lot to negativity?
I think, what you choose to look at, you will see that. If you see negativity, you will be able to see only that. If you look at positive things, you will find plenty of them. If you choose to look at negativity, which unfortunately we choose, thus we will find it all over. In my opinion, my experience on social media is that I find so many positive things. It’s like choosing through your remote control in your hand. Just like when people choose to blame a show, series or film, you are to be blamed as you have the remote in your hand. And if you don’t like anything, you might as well change it. We find everything on social media, but we don’t want to look at wonderful blogs. It’s our responsibility to look at things that are positive.
What about the philanthropist acts that you conducted?
I retired a year ago from all my social commitments.
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