Bollywood star Vicky Kaushal and renowned director Shoojit Sircar are waiting for the release of their highly-anticipated film Sardar Udham. The upcoming project, which is a biographical film about Udham Singh, a revolutionary freedom fighter who avenged the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 in Amritsar, by assassinating Michael O'Dwyer in London, is set to release on Oct. 16.
While promoting the upcoming film, the Piku director revealed the reason behind choosing the Raazi actor to play the role, based on the life of revolutionary Sardar Udham Singh.
Speaking at India Today Conclave 2021, Shoojit said that he discovered Kaushal through his amazing performance in his 2015 film Masaan. While interacting with media, the director said, "I have not seen Uri. I want to thank Vicky for choosing to do Masaan, otherwise, he won’t be doing Sardar Udham. He has a little bit of Punjabi in him and I wanted that. I wanted somebody on my page. I needed somebody who can really understand the part. With Vicky, there was passion and focus."
The Manmarziyaan actor, 33, also shared his experience of shooting Sardar Udham. He revealed that the Jallianwala Bagh massacre scene was a numbing experience for him.
"The portion where we were trying to recreate the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a numbing experience for me. As an actor, I knew what I was getting into, but I still was not prepared for it. The way Shoojit shoots that scene is so realistic that you are thrown into that world.
"After finishing that shoot, there would be times when I wouldn’t sleep because I would just keep wondering about that incident. If it was so numbing for me, what would have been the impact on the people who have actually witnessed that. This thought made me shiver. Shooting other portions of that dreaded evening the next day was difficult too," said Kaushal.
The Madras Café director also spoke about his experience on shooting the film. He said, "I have no experience in creating an era. Most of the film is shot in London. It is funny that I had never visited London before this. So, everything was based on archaic footage, documentaries from the BBC films, national archive photos. I only remember Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. So, in the Jallianwala Bagh scene, you will see a resemblance to Gandhi."