Aftab Shivdasani speaks on Red

Say hello to Aftab Shivdasani, who looks jaw-dropping hot with those chiseled abs and short-cropped hair in his impending flick Red. In an exclusive interview, the Mast boy talks about his adventures playing a passionate character in Vikram Bhatt's romantic thriller.

What is your take on the film Red?
Red for me essentially is an intense thriller. It is a story of principally three people - a love story between two and the third person is a very important character to take this story forward. It is about a man who is on his deathbed, who needs a donor as he is suffering from a heart ailment. Just when he loses all hope, he gets a donor and he comes back to life and starts to live it all over again. I play the role of Neil Oberoi. He is a very passionate guy, a very intense guy. He loves to live life. So when he comes back to life, he goes ahead and wants to thank the family of the donor, where he finds out that Celina's husband is dead. So he goes to thank her, and he instantly falls in love. She is living a lonely life, she finds support in him and then the story unfolds with the fact that her husband who is the donor of the heart did not die in an accident, he was murdered. Then the story talks about how they get together to solve the entire issue and that is where Amrita comes in and makes the whole plot even more complicated.

What does the colour Red imply in this film?
It implies a lot of danger, a lot of passion, a lot of romance.

You have worked with Vikram Bhatt before, how was it working with him this time around?
This time again, doing a film like Red was a different experience. Vikram and I always live through whatever project we do. So the experiences are always different from each other, in fact, we have just completed a film yesterday called Life Mein Kabhi Kabhi which is again a very different kind of a film.

Life Mein Kabhi Kabhi is a drama about five friends, it is an emotional film, and it is a fun, youthful film. It is a drama so to speak but Red was an extremely intense. He was very clear that he was doing something which we have done before in terms of a genre, like Kasoor. So it was a good experience going back to where we started off first. We met during Kasoor, we got really friendly and we developed an equation. Then to come back to a genre like Kasoor, succeeded by a couple of notches indeed was a special experience because today we are both much more matured, we have grown a lot as people as well as professionally. So it was like getting back to the basics, but yet two different people getting back together.

How easy or difficult was your first on-screen kiss?
My on-screen kiss with Celina was difficult on paper! But when we actually went ahead and did it, it was not that bad, it was in fact quite nice because there was certain level of comfort involved, and we were just two professionals doing our job. We wanted to make it look really nice and convincing; we didn't want to make it look like just another screen kiss because it does not make sense. If you want to keep all your ruminations aside and do something out of the ordinary so to speak, make sure that it looks extraordinary and that is what we intended to do.

We wanted to make the kiss look really nice and convincing.
You were very comfortable with Celina?
We worked out the chemistry in such a way that there was a lot of comfort between us.

And how was it working with Amrita?
Amrita and I are very good friends even off-screen. We hang out a lot together, so of course it was like working with a buddy. So there was no need to break the ice, we have worked together in the film Awaara Pagal Deewana and we were getting back to working with each other after a long time. So we were really excited working with each other and Amrita has got a very strong character. She is playing a woman for the first time; she is not playing a girl. People are so used to see Amrita Arora in a very girly kind of a perception, in girl attires. But after Red, they are going to see her in her element as a woman. She is very attractive, very sexy in the movie and she just woos you with a lot of sex appeal in the movie. So it is just great to see her going through the entire transformation, the kind of work that she has done on herself, with her performance, her body language, her attire, and of course with Vikram's direction, is commendable.

You are really going to look very different now. Was anything special done for your look in the film?
Yes, we decided to do something so as to reinvent myself. Vikram did not want the same Aftab Shivdasani that he has worked with, that people have seen in the past, so he said, "Aftab, let us try something different" and he gave me freedom to do what I wanted. Of course he helped me get a trainer, for about forty days, I trained to get into shape, and I did that very religiously. I cut my hair, and I just wanted to make sure that it will look different and the guy that you will see in Red is not the guy you have seen ever before.

What was one thing you loved about Red? Was it a challenge?
I cannot really pinpoint one thing and say that I love about Red because the entire experience was special. Red is going to be a film that will go down in history as one of my favourite films because it has been an intense film, something that I like doing, something that I consider a huge challenge to do because I had to show myself off very differently, which I have not done. To form an image is easy but once you have formed an image, to break away from that and to form a completely new image is very difficult. So that is what I would consider my biggest challenge, at this point in time in my life and career with Red.

Red is going to be a film that will go down in history as one of my favourite films
Your favourite song...
There is a song called, Ek Tum Hi Bache, it is a climax song, it is a situational song and also a fast number but it has beautifully shot. It is very romantic, very passionate but it is very meaningful to the film. Of course Afreen is very popular; it is the most popular song today and that is my next favourite song.

And when can we expect to see more of Aftab?
After Red, there is a film called Life Mein Kabhi Kabhi with Vikram again; a film called De Taali with E Niwas, there is Riteish and me in it. And there is a film called Speed again with Vikram, it has got me, Zayed, and Urmila.