Saif Ali Khan says daughter Sara doesn’t ask him for career advice: ‘You don’t want to blame other people, you have to make your own decisions’

Actor Saif Ali Khan is busy promoting his next film, Laal Kaptaan. At one of the promotion interviews, he spoke on a lot of subjects including his new film, appearing on wife Kareena Kapoor’s radio show, giving career advice to daughter Sara Ali Khan and, of course, son, Taimur.

Speaking to Zoom TV, he said the toughest part of playing a Naga Sadhu in Laal Kaptaan was actually figuring the guy out. He said: “The most difficult part was figuring out ‘who is person is’. There is this monstrous-looking guy who has to do this thing. It’s like a Western, an Italian Western, done in an Indianised way, set in an extremely wild period. The time when the East India company is taking over, the Mughal Empire is collapsing... so there were pockets of power and everybody was shifting, fighting... things were changing. Nobody was secure, everything was up in the air, kingdoms and princes were lost and made. Hired guns were riding out. So, if you got guy like that, who is like, I think, part animal, he has to growl and, say lines, he has to deliver expressions, so to find the soul of the character.. to find what kind of guy, this is the hardest thing. I remember what the sound recordist told me. After couple of days of shooting, he said that ‘you are not sounding like the guy’.

He added that “you should spend some time by yourself”. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom, not on the pot, but in front of the mirror. I had nice hotel suites in lovely places, we shot all over Rajasthan in these castles. One of the hotels had this big bathroom. I remember spending half the night there just to get the growl right. I was smoking and thinking who this guy is. It took a couple of days. The hard part was figure out who this guy was and how to play this character.”

“In the film like that even the costume tells a story. Somebody is putting a knife, a dagger in the waist, you are carrying a gun and spear, you are weighed down by about 50 kilos of stuff including the wig and makeup. They can’t even touch up your makeup as you are on a horse and horse is moving and it’s hot and you are suppose to perform. It was rough film to make. India has some of the most amazingly wild locations, various parts of Rajasthan have these mud mountains, rivers and forts. There is lot of culture in cinema to make up locations on CG where in computer graphics you make up the complete landscape. We actually gone and shot live.”

On appearing on wife Kareena’s radio show, Saif said, “I think it is always tricky with two stars interviewing each other because, I think, someone has to listen a little more and wait for you to talk. I mean, she was very sweet and I really did enjoy it... and I would have liked to talk much more.”

 Watch the trailer of Laal Kaptaan here:

Also read: After Sara Ali Khan and Ibrahim’s grand debut, mom Amrita reveals their embarrassing secret: ‘Extremely messy and untidy’

Speaking on Sara Ali Khan, he revealed that he does not give her career advice. “She doesn’t really ask me for advice, she did once when she was doing Kedarnath; she brought a scene over and we read it together and we talk about it sometimes. Something about the environment, she called and asked me. We discussed something about how to frame thoughts; about scripts... no. Because these are things you have to make your own decisions. You have to make your own decisions because you don’t want to blame other people as you are going to be blamed yourself. It’s easy to blame other people.”

He also spoke about son, Taimur Ali Khan and added that he was a ‘nature boy’. “It’s nice in a place like Pataudi and see farm animals. When he is abroad, you know he loves to go to petting zoos and things like this. He’s quite a nature boy; it’s good that way. He loves running around outside barefoot which is what I would have wanted,” reports Times Now.

Saif’s Laal Kaptaan, directed by Navdeep Singh and produced by Aanand L Rai and Eros International, is set to hit the big screens on October 18.

(With PTI inputs)

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