Manoj Bajpayee addresses similarities between Heath Ledger’s Joker and his character in Aks: ‘We were the first…’
Manoj Bajpayee said that before Heath Ledger played the role of Joker in The Dark Night, he played a very similar character in the film Aks.
Actor Manoj Bajpayee has played several noteworthy characters through his career, one of which was the serial killer Raghavan in the 2001 film Aks. Recently, Bajpayee drew similarities between his character of Raghavan in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s film and Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. He even seemed to imply that The Dark Knight had scenes inspired by Aks.
Wary about not sounding ‘pompous’, the actor said that he and his friends often discuss the showdown scene between Raghavan and Amitabh Bachchan’s character in Aks. When he was recently told about the similarity between the Aks scene and the interrogation scene between Batman and The Joker in The Dark Knight, he told Cinema Express, “My friends and I always discuss how we were the first ones to come up with a character similar to The Joker. If we had said this, people might have called us pompous. It took me six to seven months to craft the character of Raghavan. I had the task of embodying absolute evil. The dialogues given to me were in English, so I improvised with the Hindi dialogues. I approached the character with flamboyance.”
The actor shared that he wanted to portray pure evil in the film. But he realised that even villainty needs to look ‘attractive’ on screen, He added, “I remember I was in Atlanta in the US when I was preparing for the character. I was sitting in a bar, and I saw these alcohol bottles that seemed so alluring from the outside, though they contained something that is toxic. I got it then. Evil needed to be attractive.”
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra made his directorial debut with Aks. It revolved around copycat murders perpetrated by a serial killer. The hunt for the killer leads to policeman Manu Verma (Amitabh Bachchan) who had been possessed by the spirit of an assassin. The film also stars Raveena Tandon and Nandita Das.
Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his performance in The Dark Knight. Manoj Bajpayee was last seen in Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, which debuted on ZEE5. Next, he has the thriller Joram in the pipeline.
News Source:- The Indian EXPRESS
