A ‘Bull’ish chat with Pratik Gandhi, the actor who brought stock market scamster Harshad Mehta to life

In a freewheeling interview to Moneycontrol’s Ashwin Mohan, Gandhi talks about his stint with corporate India, his newfound stardom, the prep that went into playing the complex character of Harshad Mehta, lessons in financial planning and his favourite line from the show. Edited excerpts:

Q) I spotted a tweet that says “ I think Pratik Gandhi has done a better job than Harshad Mehta himself!” Everyone is raving about your performance. Tell us how did you bag this “once-in-a-lifetime" role and what do you think convinced Hansal to pick you? Being a Gujarati would have helped…

As far as getting this character is concerned, Hansal sir had seen my earlier Gujarati films Bey Yaar and Wrong Side Raju and he told me that he liked those films and he liked my performances in both the films. Apart from that, he had also seen me perform at Prithvi Hall.

When he called me for the first time for this series, I was shooting somewhere in Bhuj and could not believe that I had just got a call from Hansal Mehta. He politely said, 'Hi, I'm Hansal Mehta, I'm a film-maker.' And I said, 'of course, I know you, sir'. He said he was planning  a web series and told me 'let’s see whenever you’re back in Bombay, let’s meet up'. So then I went for an audition and I met Hansal sir at his house. That’s when he gave me the details and told me he had not even seen my audition.  He had that idea that I’ll be able to do it and that’s how I got this.

And you’re right, maybe (being a) Gujarati definitely was a big plus point for me to create this character of Harshad Mehta because he was also a Gujarati. So, to get those nuances, the language and the tonation correct, the regional connect or the flavour worked for me. All these things put together worked in my favour and that’s how I got this character.

Q)You are a popular name in Gujarati theatre. Do you think your theatre background, where you have portrayed real-life characters, helped you get into the skin of an infamous character like Harshad Mehta, perhaps the most controversial man in the history of the Indian stock markets?

Oh yes, I would give 100 percent credit to theatre for whatever I can achieve as far as the characters that I create are concerned. I created a lot of real-life characters on stage, be it Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or the most celebrated Gujarati writer Chandrakant Bakshi and there are some fictional characters as well. For the last many years, I had been doing several monologues of around one and a half and two hours. These monologues were performed in three languages—Hindi, English and Gujarati. The monologues helped me a lot and the kind of theatre that I kept doing is called minimalistic theatre. The only actor on the stage is me. There are no big sets, there are no major lights, no jingbang music to cover you up. So as an actor, you have to just constantly perform for those two hours and that is how this particular stint helped me because the internalisation of the character is the most important thing in what we do on the stage in the theatre. So, you are right, I give all the credit to the theatre.

Also, when you have to portray such infamous characters, as you said, the most interesting and challenging task for an actor, I feel, is to be neutral when you create such characters. It was very easy for me to get biased when I read about him, when I did the research or any kind of referencing. So my task was to read everything just to get a flavour of it, understand and then forget it and create a character with a neutral perspective, so that I could keep it open for the audience to interpret and make it more human where I am challenging the moral dilemma of an individual or society at large. And, that is what I have tried to achieve and Hansal sir had a similar vision.

Q) Aamir Khan has admitted that he wouldn’t shower for weeks and collected street clothes to perfect the “tapoori” act in Rangeela. Christian Bale has gone through incredible body transformations for some of his roles. What were the changes that Pratik Gandhi had to undergo to get the look and feel of the "Big Bull"?

The biggest change that I had to undergo was body transformation. I had to gain around 18 kgs to get into that bigger body frame to fit into Harshad Mehta’s character because I was too lean and thin. And in my first meeting, Hansal sir told me that I will have to gain a lot of weight because he wanted the double-chin and the big belly.

I tried whatever I could and I put on 18 kgs and weighed 88 kgs when I started shooting for this character. Other changes that I tried to incorporate were a few minute mannerisms. Like the character's restlessness; so there was a constant restlessness in his body. His fingers, his thumbs were moving constantly, his eyes were constantly moving and he was constantly thinking.

Then there was a smirk, a one-sided smile that I developed for this character. I spoke to Hansal sir about it and said these were the things which I had in mind for the character. And he said something beautiful,  'You do whatever you want but make it a part of your body. It can’t look forced'.  And in theatre also, I personally believe that if I see an actor trying too hard to do something, as an audience I will get tired of looking at him or her. So to make it smooth, to make it absolutely realistic, I had to make it all a part of my body and when I actually did that, it helped me a lot.

There are a lot of things which came impromptu. When I imbibed those characteristics like my smirk and one-sided smile, it helped me portray arrogance and ego and sometimes over-confidence.

Apart from that when I gained a lot of weight, my breathing pattern changed, so my pause work of the lines also changed. The way I used to sit, the way I used to get up, walk, the way I used to wear my shoes, my posture changed. Everything changed and overall that worked for me.

Q) Harshad Mehta was a gutsy man who dreamt big and exploited the loopholes in the system. The web series shows his calm yet incredibly powerful convincing and negotiation skills. You have had a brush with marketing and are no stranger to corporate life. Can you elaborate on that stint and did it strengthen your performance?

I have a diploma in mechanical engineering and I did my graduation in production engineering. So I'm an industrial engineer and this branch of engineering deals more with the management side of engineering—the productivity, manpower planning, all structure design, process design, Lean Sigma, Six Sigma and all those things. These are my favourite subjects. I worked from 2004 to 2016, yeah almost 12 years in this field.

My first job was a sales role involving negotiation skills. In my corporate stint of 10 years, I had to do a lot of presentations and had to sell ideas to the top management to be implemented.

I implemented a lot of initiatives in the corporate world. So, that experience helped me a lot in a way where I approached the script differently or I approached the character differently and I believe that once an engineer always an engineer. Engineering is a way of life and it teaches you to approach the same thing from multiple angles and it has gone inside me, so now when you ask me such question, I realise that I actually do that. I do that unknowingly so that thin-slicing of thought process happens very fast. I guess it has become a part of my body now, myself now, my conscience now.

These things help a lot because in this field how you present yourself, how you talk to people, how you understand the question and answer them makes a lot of difference, off screen and on screen also. An understanding between the lines helps a lot to create the nuance of a character and that’s what we generally do in the corporate world as well. So, I think yes, a lot of credit goes to that experience also.

Apart from that, I had worked on a lot of different things to survive in Bombay in my initial years like I did kid’s birthday parties as a host. Then corporate shows, kitty parties, I used to be the host, where I used to get quick money, Rs 2,000, sometimes Rs 1,500 for one show of two-three hours.

I also took up yearly contracts of 10 to 15 societies for cleaning their water tanks. I bought two machines and trained some people and I used to do that to survive. I had also taken up the contract of putting up cell sites, those mobile towers that we fix up on the buildings, so I had put up around 10-12 cell sites across Bombay. But the company that gave me the contract, paid my money in such a fashion that it was difficult for me to survive, so I had to close that down. I was doing all these things along with my theatre...the constant struggle...  to get a break into films.

I got my first Gujarati film in 2012 which was Bey Yaar, which created history in Gujarati cinema and it changed a lot of things for a lot of people. It became the first Gujarati film that was released in multiplexes. So multiplexes were opened for Gujarati film from Bey Yaar, then after two years Wrong Side Raju won National Award for Best Gujarati Film and that was the time when I decided to be a full-time actor.

I used to accumulate my leaves and wait for a good opportunity to utilise those leaves. At one point, I had 250 leaves in my account, of which I just utilised 20 leaves for Bey Yaar. After two years, I again took leave for around 23 days and then I finished that shoot. So that’s how I had been working and trying to balance both these worlds to survive and to do the kind of work that I like to do.

Q) As part of your preparation for the role, did you interact with friends,  family or assocaites of Harshad Mehta to get an insight into his personality? He passed away in 2001 and there are hardly any documented videos of the man. How did you approach the homework?

As far as the homework for this character is concerned, there is a lot of reference material available on the internet which I went through and our script was 550 pages long, so that’s a detailed research document on the entire series of events.

I also met some people who worked with Harshad Mehta, who had been in the BSE ring during that time when things used to happen manually. So, I had to learn the sign language they used inside the ring to trade. This is how I prepared for this character because for me, knowing the character, his characteristics, his world, how he used to meet people, what he used to do, what he used to like and the way he used to carry himself was important to know, so that I could imbibe and internalise those things.

Q) Have you had a chance to meet India’s most celebrated stock market investor and the modern-day "Big Bull" Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and gain some insights from him?

Well, I have not met Rakesh Jhunjhunwala ever, just heard about him, just saw some photographs but yeah, I met a lot of other people, especially those who have worked with Harshad Mehta. There are a lot of people who told me that they worked together in the ring or they used to have tea together daily or they had taken some tips from him but yeah I have not met Rakesh Jhunjhunwala yet.

Q) Before you got the lead role, were you familiar with the stock market and do stocks excite you the way they excited Harshad Mehta? If not, then where does Prateek Gandhi invests his hard-earned money and can you share some financial planning tips with our readers?

I'm not that great in finance or in understanding finance. I have never invested much in stocks, though being Gujarati I should have been doing that I have never done that. After knowing this world, it excites me to know and understand more about how it works. I'm learning more these days and as far as my investment are concerned, what I am doing right now is I'm putting some amount of money in mutual funds on a regular basis. And, another investment is that I have taken a house, there is a huge loan that I have to repay. So that is taking a big chunk of my earnings.

But there is something beautiful which I had heard from one of my seniors.  He told me, 'Treat your investment as your expense and then only you’ll be able to save some money', which is such a beautiful line that I have been following this for the last 10 to 12 years. So yeah, that’s how I have been planning my finances.

Q) "Risk hain toh ishq hain” is one of the popular dialogues of Scam 1992. In fact, Harshad Mehta is shown as a charming man who is never short of a wisecrack or a proverb in Hindi and Gujarati. Which is your favourite line?

Apart from “risk hain toh ishq hain”, my favourite line is “ success kya hai? Failure ke baad ka naya chapter" and I love this line. There’s so much of positivity in this line that it keeps you going.