Nawazuddin Takes Dig at Prashant Narayanan for Calling Ranveer 'Pretentious' Actor: 'How Can You...'

Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui has taken a dig at Prashant Narayanan and Jim Sarbh for questioning Ranveer Singh’s acting process for the portrayal of Sultan Alauddin Khilji in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat. Ranveer had revealed that to prepare for the role, he went to ‘a dark place’ emotionally and locked himself up in his Goregaon house.

However, actor Prashant Narayanan in an interview with Siddharth Kannan called Ranveer “a liar”. Prashant said, “Woh jhoot bol raha hai. Yeh dark spaces mein jana, yeh sab karna yeh bakwaas ki baatein hai.” Now, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who is considered one of the finest actors of his generation, has come out in Ranveer’s support.

When he was asked about Prashant’s comments in a conversation with Shubankar Mishra, he said, “The people who are calling it fake, did they bother to understand the actor’s process? Did they bother to understand how he was living his life when he was creating the character? They are simply judging him. We don’t know what a man is thinking when he’s coming up with a characterisation.”

He added, “They think it is pretentious. When you dive deep into a character, it is a very painful process. This is a very irresponsible thing to say. If there was no process, then what Heath Ledger did in The Dark Knight would not be possible… That man was extremely serious about his performance and that is why he excelled in the character; that’s how iconic characters are born. If we are going to take (the process) casually, then you’ll end up with people just blurting out dialogues randomly. This is what separates a good actor from the rest. You never know which part of his past he is tapping to get into character. You can’t take this so easily.”

Nawazuddin said that actors do tap into “uncomfortable spaces” to get into the minds of their characters. “How can you casually say that this is all pretentious? Have you ever tried to play any such character yourself?”

When the interviewer identified Ranveer’s critics as the main villain of Murder 2 (Prashant Narayanan), and his co-star in Padmaavat (Jim Sarbh), Nawazuddin asked, “What are they doing now? Do you see what Bobby Deol has been doing lately? And what is the man who commented doing currently?”

“Who are we to say if Ranveer should or should not put himself through a painful process? What if he did? How do we know it? It is very easy to make such comments. We cannot underestimate anyone.. This is an actor’s job,” he concluded.

In a recent conversation with The Quint, Jim Sarbh said, “There are all those actors who are like ‘You know, I was so stuck in my character that I had to get mental therapy for weeks after.’ I was like ‘shut up bro. You didn’t even know your lines on the day, what nonsense.”