Exclusive! Adarsh Gourav on The White Tiger: I thought the film was too big and way out of my league

The White Tiger's lead actor Adarsh Gourav talks about how he landed the role of Balram and how he prepared for it

The White Tiger, starring Adarsh Gourav, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Rajkummar Rao, released on Netflix on January 22. An adaptation of Aravind Adiga's 2008 novel of the same name, it follows the story of Balram, a young man who uses his wit to escape from the clutches of poverty and rise to the top.

Adarsh Gourav, who played a young Shah Rukh in My Name Is Khan, plays Balram Halwai in The White Tiger, a role for which he has received a lot of love and adulation. But how did Gourav prep for the role? 

In an exclusive interview with mid-day's entertainment editor Mayank Shekhar, Adarsh Gourav shares his story right from the beginning when he was just a teenager and raring to go. He says, "I actually hail from Jamshedpur. In the 8th grade, my father got posted to Mumbai and my whole family decided to relocate here. Until then, I was learning Hindustani classical music and one of the reasons we decided to relocate to Mumbai was because my parents thought I would have a potential career in music here. I'm a vocalist, used to sing in a couple of bands in college, but originally I'm a classical singer."

Watch the complete interview below:

He adds, "Acting was completely accidental. Once, I was performing at Kala Ghoda festival and somebody saw me and asked me if I was interested in acting, and like any other excited teenager I said yes. Then I went to a photo studio with my father and got three passport-sized photos clicked and sent it to them, and they were like, 'iska kya kare hum?' (laughs) They wanted a proper portfolio shoot. So then I went to this studio in Juhu and got 10 photos clicked for 3,000 rupees. After that I started auditioning."

Speaking about his first project, Gourav shares, "My first project was My Name Is Khan, where I played the young SRK. Over the years, I worked in a few films, web series, did a bunch of ads, and somewhere down the line I decided I wanted to take acting seriously. Cut to 2019, it was sort of difficult because work wasn't coming in even though I was auditioning a lot. And then I got an audition call for The White Tiger."

Sharing how he wasn't sure of auditioning for the film, Gourav says, "I figured it was too big and way out of my league. But the reason I went for it was because I had been trying to audition with Tess Joseph (casting director) for a very long time and this was the first time I'd got a call from her office. So I thought if nothing else, at least if I give a decent audition, she'll call me again. And I had read the book as a teenager, so I had some context. I went and auditioned, and one month later I got a call saying they wanted me as Balram, and I had the most anticlimactic reaction to the news where I only said, 'Oh, thanks.' It was too big for me to understand what had happened."

Adarsh Gourav's biggest high as an actor is the prep, and he says he has the most fun while preparing for the role. So how did he prepare for The White Tiger? "I packed my bags and went to this village in Jharkhand. This was through a person who lived nearby whom I befriended and convinced somehow to take me to his house in Jharkhand. First he was a little weirded out, but then I explained to him that I needed to prepare for a role. So we went there and I stayed for two weeks anonymously. Even his family didn't know I was an actor. Through him, I met people in his village, the elders, his friends, had some eye-opening experiences, and tried to understand what they thought about people in the city," he says.

Gourav adds, "After that, I came to Delhi and thought I should work at a place like where Balram works at. Balram works in a tea shop and he hates it and feels like he's meant for bigger things. So I got myself a job at a tea stall in Saket where I was paid Rs 100 a day for cleaning plates and the floor, and I absolutely hated it. There would be days where I would be cleaning plates next to a gutter and there would be these huge bandicoots running around next to me."

And then came the day when his efforts to get into the skin of Balram bore fruit. Gourav recalls, "One day, I was going to my hotel and this guy was parking a lorry filled with construction rods next to my hotel and he saw me and said, 'Aye, idhar aa!' So I went up to him and he asked me, 'Yeh uthane mein madat kar doge, 20 rupaye dunga tumhe chai-paani ke liye.' At that moment, when I hadn't even opened my mouth, and this guy just called me and asked me to do this, I knew that I was Balram, there was no doubt about it."

The White Tiger, directed by Ramin Bahrani, has been making quite a buzz since its release on Netflix. Based on Aravind Adiga's Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The White Tiger examines caste, corruption and poverty in India.

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