Being bad never felt this good

Hrithik Roshan and Rishabh Sawhney

They say never meet your heroes. But Rishabh Sawhney, who plays the antagonist in Fighter, would argue against it after working alongside his childhood hero Hrithik Roshan. "When he made his acting debut with Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai [2000], it was the first time I saw a Hindi cinema actor having a model physique. I was a 120-kilo kid at the time. That inspired me," recalls Sawhney. When he met Roshan on the set of director Siddharth Anand's aerial action thriller, he was understandably starstruck. "My acting coach had told me this would happen, but I needed to focus on my character."

In the Roshan, Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor-starrer that is centred on the journey of a few Indian Air Force pilots, Sawhney's character is shown as the mastermind behind the 2019 Pulwama attack. For him, the face-off sequences were the toughest. "My biggest concern was that I didn't want to hurt Hrithik while performing action. I was being slightly hesitant, but he told me, ‘You make sure that the punch looks authentic and I will make sure it doesn't land on my face.'"

The actor is not in a hurry to sign his next. He says, "I worked hard over the last two years, and now I should enjoy this success. It's new for me and I want to savour every bit of it."