Freddy Daruwala on the flip side of playing the baddie: It’s only in the end that you meet and fight with the hero

Actor Freddy Daruwala, who plays an antagonist, yet again, in the Salman Khan-starrer Race 3 is on cloud nine for being part of a popular franchise. And when Salman shared Freddy’s look from the film and introduced him as the baddie, Rana, he garnered great response from his fans.

Though Freddy is excited to be sharing screen space with Salman, he admits that playing a negative role has a flip side to it. “The sad part of being a villain is that you don’t get to share the same frame with your favourite hero in the film till the end. It’s only in the end that the hero and the villain meet and fight. That happened in Holiday too when I had a fight sequence with Akshay [Kumar] sir. It was only during the climax,” quips Freddy, who played the head of sleeper cells in the 2014 action thriller.

Playing the villain in most films now, does he misses romancing the female actor onscreen? Freddy says, “Heroine toh bhool hi jao. Mere naseeb mein koi actress hi nahi hai. (Forget about the female lead, I don’t have a female actor starring in my opposite). John [Abraham] played a negative character in Race 2 but had a heroine [Jacqueline Fernandez], but I have not been lucky still.”

However, Freddy is quick to add that the female audience no longer just drools over the hero but even the bad guy. “You see, the perception of seeing the baddie onscreen and saying, ‘Oh he is very villainous,’ is no more present. And filmmakers are making the most of it. They think, ‘Arrey yaar, hero to hai hi mera badiya, villain bhi itna good looking hai. Toh ladkiyan to villain ko bhi dekhengi’ (I already have a good hero and now even the villain is also good looking. So, female fans would love him too).”

Interact with Monika Rawal Kukreja at Twitter/@monikarawal