'DOWNFALL WAS WRITTEN FOR ME'

'I regret not showing my grandparents the man I am today!

Prateik Babbar has often experimented with his film roles but in Madhur Bhandarkar’s India Lockdown, audiences get to see a completely different side of the 36 year old as an actor.

Talking about playing a migrant worker named Madhav, “The fact that my mother (Smita Patil) has portrayed such rural characters in her career, I thought if I could leave no stone unturned in my performance, then people would see a glimpse of my mother’s body of work in this character.”

How challenging was it to play a migrant worker, who is stuck in the lockdown?

Oh, it was definitely a challenge because the role is so far from my comfort zone, so different from the urban person that I am.

To shed the urbanism, we had to work hard.

But I was immediately invested in the story and the character after my first meeting with Madhur Bhandarkar.

We are so blessed to have even the basic amenities that we will never know what it feels like to fight for survival.

When Madhur came with this character, I thought it was a huge responsibility to represent this community.

I had to do it the right way.

I had to do justice to the role because we saw these people on the news and heard about the hardships they went through during the lockdown.

We saw shocking images of them walking all the way from Mumbai to Bihar, wearing shoes made out of plastic bottles and what not.

We have tried to recreate those things in the movie to show the depth of their struggle.

The hardest part was to shoot, to know in detail what these people went through.