Abhishek Bachchan on playing Harshad Mehta: We haven’t tried to whitewash him

Abhishek Bachchan in The Big Bull.

In early 2019, Abhishek Bachchan's neighbour-friend Ajay Devgn called him to discuss a film he was producing. "He calls me only when he knows something is special. He is like an elder brother. Out of my love and respect for him, it'll be a blind yes," begins Bachchan, recounting how director Kookie Gulati, writer Arjun Dhawan, Devgn and he came together to create the world of The Big Bull, and more importantly, the character of Hemant Shah. "Ajay never accepts a blind yes. Kookie and Arjun (Writer) came over for narration and they walked me through the graph. It was intriguing because it was set in economically turbulent times. This is the triumphant story of that one man who wanted to make a difference. That attracted me to The Big Bull and the story developed thereon. Kookie's vision was clear about the journey of a man with big dreams in his eyes, being sure that this is an emotional journey for the audience rather than getting trapped in the technicalities of the story itself. The basic DNA of the script was very clear."

A still from Scam 1992

But a fictional narrative inspired by the life of stockbroker Harshad Mehta poses a cardinal problem - how does one maintain the character's essence and yet be careful not to glorify him? "Hemant Shah, my character is a flawed one. I don't know if I agree entirely with the fact that the moral responsibility of the subject is on the writers. They are storytellers and they shouldn't bother with morality. When we - producers, actors and the director steps in, that's when the moral responsibility steps in. Do you deify this man or do you humanise? I was clear in my initial discussions that if he is aspirational, he has to be shown as a flawed man. If everything about him was to be heroic, he'd be unidimensional. He has human frailties and I like the fact that he slips. He is so taken in by the world he has helped create. We have come of age as an audience. We want our heroes to be real and flawed. Hemant is from a chawl and then owns an apartment with a swimming pool in the balcony. It's easy to take a stand on this guy but what makes him interesting for me is that we show him for who he is. Moral responsibility comes in when you are making a film for a larger audience and the team has made no attempt to whitewash him."

Harshad Mehta

Hansal Mehta's Scam 1992, starring Pratik Gandhi in the lead, took the nation by storm last year. Bachchan knows that topping it will be a tough act. "All my life, I have been compared to the best in the business. It doesn't frazzle me," says the star son. True to his generous nature, Bachchan says he loved Scam 1992. "Comparisons are fine and as long as we are compared to good stuff, it's fine. But in terms of design and intention, episodic series and movies are different disciplines to write for. In a web series, the liberty of time is there and thus it will have depth and detail. The flip side is it can't be boring. In cinema, you have to crack it up and make the story pacey. The two shouldn't be comparable. The Big Bull is a movie that has scale that's undergone a different process. Comparisons are inevitable and I am proud of what we've made. We have done the best and the audience has it in their hands to decide its fate."