Chunky Panday on reuniting with Anupam Kher in Vijay 69: I’ve always looked up to him for right advice

Chunky Panday is known for his comic timing and several comic characters he has brought to life. However, in his long career, the actor got to play a Parsi for the first time in his recent film Vijay 69, and he went all out with it. He says, “When I got this character, playing a Parsi for the first time, I wanted to do it completely over-the-top. I had a dialect coach and did everything possible because I wanted a full Oscar award for this. I wasn’t going to settle for anything less. I went total caricaturish with it, but then he (Anupam Kher) just held my hand and said let’s play it real.”

In the film, Chunky Panday plays Anupam’s sounding board, and the person who is his biggest cheerleader and harshest critic. Ask him if there has been a time when he had doubts and someone else pushed him, and he says, “I was telling myself I couldn’t do it, but it was my mother who pushed me to do it. If I am an actor today, my mother has a very big hand in that with the way she encouraged me to do that. I don’t know where I would be if not for her support. She not only brought me into this world, but also pushed me into the world of acting. That was a strong support mentally for me. You really need such support and for me, it came from my mother.”

Vijay 69 gave Chunky a chance to reunite with Anupam after a long time, and he raves about their real-life friendship: “We’ve known each other for so long and just like in the film we are 4AM friends, we are quite close in real life too. What friendship is really about is being honest to each other. He frankly tells me what he doesn’t like about me and I have always tried to correct it. I have always looked up to him for the right advice.” He also applauds Kher’s efforts for the film. “We’ve grown up in the age of physical comedy. I grew up watching Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy as kids. But here, it wasn’t just physical comedy but real physical work that this man has done. He learned how to swim, cycling and running. He actually became an athlete and it was great watching that whole transformation,” he ends.