Casting Director and Actor, Trishaan who is among the very few Indian Casting Directors to have made a mark with his access to the Casting Society of America, was recently bestowed with the ‘golden opportunity’ of training popular actor Akshay Kumar for his Bengali diction in the soon-to-be-released big-ticket movie, Gold!!
For the uninitiated, Trishaan along with his partner Shubham Gaur happened to be the first Casting Director team to be awarded the IWM Digital Award for the Best Casting Director in the web space at the first-of-its-kind digital awards, organized by IWMBuzz.com.
Trishaan being a Bengali was apt for the job and he did it awesomely well!!
This was the first time that Trishaan trained an actor for a particular dialect. However, the art of training is not new to him, as he has held workshops earlier and has trained people. Earlier, he has trained blind people for a film for which he also did the casting. However, training as big a star like Akshay Kumar was a first experience for him.
Says Trishaan, “I have been a fan of Akshay Kumar from childhood. There was a specific language that had to be taught to him. Akshay’s character, Tapan Das is a Bengali. All my friends who are especially from West Bengal, speak Hindi in a certain way, which many times is grammatically wrong, and the pronounciations are not perfect. So these mistakes had to be incorporated in Akshay’s language. The flaws in language had to be put in to make it real. There is a difference between somebody who is from West Bengal and one from East Bengal. Tapan Das is someone who is born and brought up in Kolkata and speaks in a certain way. I am a Bengali and understand the language very well.”
Trishaan was always with Akshay Kumar from the day one of reading till the film was completely made. “I was always there from the beginning of script reading with Akshay. I used to go to his place and read with him. Phrases and idioms, specific to Kolkata used to be added in the lines. He was also extremely hard-working. He is very famous as an actor as his improvisation in the role is always top-notch. Not only during shoot, but off the shoot too, I had to reheasse with him. He is a perfectionist to the core. I was also stationed in the same hotel where his team was placed. The challenge was that since he was a proper Punjabi guy, he has to first neutralize the Punjabi and then pick up the nuances of Hindi with this Bengali accent,” he adds.
Trishaan narrates a certain incident which proves Akshay’s sincerity and dedication in learning the art to the T. “He once called his mom and instead of speaking in Punjabi, he was speaking in Hindi with Bengali accent. Work happened that well and he got into the skin of the character with such perfection.”
Not only has Trishaan trained Akshay Kumar in his dialect, but has also acted in Gold and also happens to be Akshay’s co-actor. “I have done a role in the film as well where I am on the negative side. It was fun where at one point of time I was working on his dialect, on the other side, I was against him as character.”
Trishaan is a rare gem, as he is the only Casting Director who is a trained actor himself (trained from FTII). He has cast for international films and series like Furious 7, Sense 8, Viceroy’s House, Million Dollar Arm etc.
As his upcomimg projects, he has a series for European channel, ITV titled Beecham House which is being directed by Gurinder Chaddha for which his Company is casting. “It is a period drama of late 17th century, for which we will be bringing in lot of big names from Mumbai.”
He has movies Hotel Mumbai, The Wedding Guest and Chaman Bahar to release.
Way to go, Trishaan!!