Manoj Bajpayee on His Triple Play With Festival Hit ‘The Fable,’ Thriller ‘Despatch’ and Prime Video’s ‘Family Man’: ‘My Audience Is Getting Wider and Wider’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Manoj Bajpayee, known as one of India’s finest actors, is riding high on the festival circuit with “The Fable,” which debuted at the Berlinale and is now heading to Valladolid’s SEMINCI and the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.
The film follows a happy family led by Dev (Bajpayee), who live as owners of a vast Himalayan orchard estate until a series of mysterious fires bring into question who they really are. Directed by Raam Reddy (Locarno winner “Thithi”), the film resonated with Bajpayee during a time of personal transition.
More from Variety
“This was the film that happened to me just when I was transitioning into a more spiritual realm of life, and my mind was in no mood to get stuck into this ambition mode and the goal mode,” Bajpayee tells Variety. “It is something that I have been searching for for many years.”
The actor found an immediate connection to his character, Dev. “I could relate to it. I could understand what Dev was going through, the struggle and the conflict of Dev,” Bajpayee says. “He was getting sucked into the materialistic part of life, which he’s inherited from his father and grandfather.”
The actor faced unique challenges in portraying Dev’s emotional journey. “It’s your silence which has to convey a lot of things which the character is going through, the conflict, the wanting to completely detach himself from the goings on and the estate and is still not able to let it go,” Bajpayee says.
Shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, “The Fable” has been selected for several international festivals. Bajpayee values this recognition: “More than this word called ‘international,’ my audience is getting wider and wider. It’s such a great feeling that most of your films are being shown in one prestigious film festival or the other.”
Meanwhile, Bajpayee’s “Despatch,” directed by Kanu Behl (Cannes titles “Titli” and “Agra”), is set to premiere at the Mumbai Film Festival. Bajpayee plays a tabloid journalist threatened by digitalization and going through a mid-life crisis who is drawn into events beyond his control.
The actor praises Behl’s rigorous approach: “Kanu Behl is a one-of-a-kind director. Each and every young actor should really line up outside his office to at least work with him once in their lifetime. The workshops that he makes you go through, the takes that he makes you go through, all of it… it all boils down to only one thing: the vast experience of filmmaking, the vast experience of performance that it really helps you to gather, is something else.”
Bajpayee, who has won the best actor prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards twice (for “Bhonsle” and “Aligarh”) and acting honors at India’s National Film Awards three times (for “Bhonsle,” “Pinjar” and “Satya”), found his popularity enhanced even further with Prime Video series “The Family Man.” In the hit show, Season 3 of which is filming now, Bajpayee portrays Srikant Tiwari, a middle-class Mumbai-based salaryman who is secretly an intelligence officer.
Fans of “The Family Man” can look forward to an eventful third season. “Season 3 is going to be far more bigger, and the story is far more complicated this time,” Bajpayee teases. “Srikant Tiwari is in a much, much bigger soup, and now he has to come out of it, to save himself and to save his family and to save his job.”
Bajpayee has also completed work on an untitled Indo-American project directed by Ben Rekhi (“Watch List”). “It’s a drama, a story set in India, but told very differently, because the director is from the U.S. so his lens is going to be very, very different,” he says.
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
