Exclusive: Godse was not the devil and Gandhiji was not God.. Chinmay Mandlekar

The name of Rajkumar Santoshi impressed me the most in this film. I grew up watching Ghayal and Ghatak films in theatres, when I grew up I started acting, one of the directors I wanted to work with was Rajkumar Santoshi. When such a director calls you and tells you that you want to do a film. After that who thinks anything else. I reached to meet him and he told me the subject of this film, which I liked very much.

I would like to mention that I had signed this film before Kashmir Files and its shooting had also started earlier. One schedule of this film was shot before Kashmir Files and one after Kashmir Files. I can say that both were shot almost at the same time.

If you are from Maharashtra, Marathi drama Me Godse Bolto has given people a different perspective on Godse for some time now. Godse had kept some things in front of the court. Which was never brought out in the public domain. Why did he do that? He had given a full statement on this in the court, in which he had clearly said that there was a time. When I was a follower of Gandhiji, I used to respect him a lot, but the partition changed the whole thinking. I think Godse was a confused youth. Whatever he did. I will never support him. It should never have happened, but his anger was not justified. The country was divided into pieces.. The partition of the country was not easy for the people of that time. Tomorrow someone tells me that Andheri is not a part of Mumbai, then it will be very difficult for me to understand. Confused youth happens in every era. Nathuram Godse went a step ahead and took a step which he never had to take. That step changed the course of the history of our country, but that is all. What we call him the devil. We should not do that. I have a problem with making a person a villain and a hero. This happens with Gandhi too, for some people Gandhi is a hero. Villain for some. Means you are either making a god or a devil. You are not showing him as a human being. You are not ready to accept that Gandhiji may be wrong in some matters and Nathuram Godse may be right in some matters. Which is every human being. Our history has been full of ups and downs. In such history we cannot find heroes and villains. If you are making a film Sher Shah, you know he is the hero. There is no gray area in it, this film is about ideology, so there is a lot of gray area in it.

In this film, I did not do even a penny’s worth of makeup. Vikram Gaikwad is our makeup artist in this film. This is his wonder. He looked at me and said just cut his hair and don’t do anything, so I used to go to the set and just get dressed and get ready for the shoot and the same Gandhiji used to get makeup done because his skin was the reason for wearing dhoti. He looked more than that so he needed to get makeup done on the whole body. I was completely dependent on the script. I also read some books and Godse’s statement given in the court.

There are many, because there are many controversies in the film. In one scene, there is a very long and wide dispute between Gandhiji and me. The posters in the film are also of the same scene. After that scene, Nathuram Godse thinks whether this man is speaking right. This is a film based on historical phantasm. They met only once, when he shot, but they meet many times in the film, but the dialogues of the film are his own, not written by the writer. Whatever he has said at one time or the other in his life, we had to speak after fully imbibing it.

If there is a dispute, then it is done. It is not in our hands. Controversy is involved in everything these days.

I did my first Hindi film Tere Bin Laden in 2010. It was a comic film. After that I did films like Sanghai and Bhavesh Joshi, but I realized that people are only offering me roles of policemen. After that I had to stop because I didn’t want to be typecast. The good thing for me was that I was getting good and different offers in Marathi. Now is a good time. Now who knows his work. He will get different work.

I would like to wish him all the best. By the way, we are making a series of eight films on Shivaji. 4 have been made. Shooting for fifth.

Too much especially if that character is very popular. It is imprinted in our mind. Like Gandhiji, I don’t think there is anyone in the country who would say that he has not seen Gandhi, because Gandhiji is there in our notes. In such a situation, your personality should be such that you look fit in Gandhiji. Similar is the story of Shivaji in Maharashtra. You will find his photo or statue at every other intersection. There is a complete description of his look. In such a situation, the actor has to imbibe completely what does not fit in him. People will not accept him.

Kala Pani is coming on Netflix. Which is a science fiction series. In this, Mona Singh and Ashutosh Gowariker are with me in the acting. Apart from this, there is a film Happy Teachers Day. Radhika Madan is in that film.