Talented actor Varun Badola has a ‘double whammy’ to be proud of in his upcoming stint in ALTBalaji’s web-series, Apharan.
Well, while he will be part of the series in the capacity of an actor, he has also shouldered the responsibility of writing dialogues for the series. The series has Arunodhya Singh, Nidhi Singh, Mahie Gill in the lead cast.
Says Varun, “Frankly, I started the process of writing last year sometime in October. So it has been more than a year for the project to get finished. The idea was to get the script of Apharan right, before going on floor. Well, to say the least, the process of writing was tiring.”
“I have not written for the last 10 years. Writing is a practice and I would write a few lines, take a walk and get back to it. But by the time I reached the 7th or 8th episode, I could sit for a longer duration and write,” adds Varun.
Talking on his acting stint in the series, he states, “The other part I played was as an actor. Thankfully, I do act a bit more than I write (smiles). The idea is to play something that I have never played earlier, so that you don’t lose interest in what you do.”
Varun who played the lead in Aek Chabhi Hai Padoss Mein early in his career, was part of the writing team of the show. “I was not the main writer there, but on the very first day of shoot, Sidharth Sengupta asked me to write it. And now in Apharan, he is the Producer and Driector. So when he approached me again to write the dialogues, I accepted it. There is a similarity between Apharan and Aek Chabhi in the fact that the language and sensibilities are similar, irrespective of the fact that the genres are very much different. Sidharth was ready to take the risk and I grabbed the opportunity (smiles).”
On the concept of Apharan, Varun says, “It is the story of a cop who is known to be an abduction specialist. He gets wrongly implicated in one case and is sent to serve a three years sentence. So when he gets back, life takes a different turn for him. He has different verticals to climb, especially because he is not reinstated as a cop. He agrees to abduct a girl out of frustration and how this act puts him into problems after problems is the crux of the story.”
Varun plays the role of Lakhman Rawat the guy who owns the security agency. “He is the security advisor to the gentleman whose daughter gets abducted. It becomes his moral responsibility to be part of the search party. He is also an ex-cop and sees some foul play in the whole adventure. We also have the protagonist Rudra Srivastav who is trying to keep the police at bay. Overall, it is a complete Bollywood masala.”
Talking about the digital medium, he states, “It has just about started. There is a long way to go. On one hand, there is freedom to do things your way. We must also note the fact that we should not squander this opportunity by becoming over-indulgent. We should make stuff that meets with the international standards. We don’t usually make films of different genres. Everything is based on the same recipe of girl meets boy. So this platform will be used to try out different genres and story lines. It comes as a welcome break to writers, directors and actors to do something different. We are in for good times on the digital platform.”
Varun has risen to become a more confident writer with this experience of Apharan. “Yes, this has been a good confidence booster for the writer in me. This is the first time I have taken the responsibility of one complete show. It was interesting to maintain the graph of each character and move on. It is a very difficult job, but it was exciting. Being an actor, it is a bit easier for me to envision a character as writer and put it on paper.”
Varun is open to writing assignments and will want to take this passion of his ahead.
Way to go, Varun!!