Chunky Pandey and I are trading ridiculously juvenile Bengali jokes with each other and laughing with tears in our eyes. “I’m obsessed with all things Bengali, man. I love fish, my maid is Bengali, I acted in Bengali and Bangladeshi films,” he says, still laughing. And on Friday, the 54-year-old actor unveiled a new look as a villain in Begum Jaan, a Hindi remake of a Bengali film. We meet at his bar, The Elbo Room in Khar, to chat about the film, how he got his name, and how he became a star in Bangladesh.
How did your role in Begum Jaan come about?
Srijit Mukherji called me and said he wants me to do this film. He sent me the trailer of Rajkahini but told me not to watch the film. I called him back and asked, ‘Are you sure you want me?’ He said yes, but I would have to audition. I went two days after Housefull 3 had released. All the ADs were laughing because they’d just seen me play Aakhri Pasta for the third time, and here I was auditioning to be a villain. When Srijit called to say I got the part, I thought ‘Mamma Mia, he’s a joking!’
You shaved your head for the role. That’s commitment.
Srijit told me, ‘You’ve got to lose Chunky Pandey to play Kabir’. I said, ‘Lose him? In the forest, in the streets, where?’ So, he asked me to cut my hair short. We went to my hairdresser, Sapna Bhavnani, and all was going well till she whipped out a buzzer and went “Phurrrrr”. I could have stabbed someone then, because I’ve never buzzed my hair! When I returned home after the look test, my maid screamed, ‘O baba, chor aa gaya!’ I thought okay, this is working, and that’s half the job done.
Begum Jaan isn’t your comeback. Would you say it was as Aakhri Pasta in the Housefull series?
Sajid Khan and I are both fans of Amitabh Bachchan, and we took Aakhri from Aakhri Raasta, and Pasta because the character thinks he’s Italian. And sometimes, when everybody loves a character, the actor gets some good lines. I’ve been very lucky, these past 10 years, with the kind of roles I’ve got. Because after I delivered the biggest hit of my career, Aankhen (1993), I was out of work. I was getting called to play a brother, a friend — anything but just not what I wanted.
That’s when you moved to Bangladesh to act in films there?
I got a part in Partho Ghosh’s Teesra Kaun? (1994), where I met Rituparna Sengupta. She was instrumental in getting me to Bangladesh. We did Swami Keno Aswami (1997), which was a monster hit. Between 1995 and 1998, I was there — I had a good time, I meddled a bit in the film distribution business, too. I spoke in Bengali for my first film but then got my lines dubbed because I’d started dreaming that my parents were talking to me in Bangla! Then my wife said I should return to Bollywood and I agreed — it is my pehchaan.
Your Aankhen co-star, Govinda, has been struggling to make his comeback. But you’ve managed to get steady work. What’s the trick?
I decided that I will do films that will appeal to young people, because they had no idea who I was. I realised that in every movie, there are a handful of scenes that stand out. So, if you get two of those four-five scenes, then you’re set. I’ve gone after stuff that is short and highly appealing. I don’t want to be the hero, just give me that one part the film can’t do without. It’s paid off, but it could have gone the other way.
In an industry where people have changed their names for lesser reasons such as astrology, what’s it like to be “Chunky”?
My mother was a doctor and so I spent a lot of time with Hirabai, our maid. One day, she got home and saw Hirabai bouncing me on her lap and cooing, “Chunky, chunky”. She liked the name and it stuck. For my first film, Aag Hi Aag (1987), Pahlaj Nihalani asked, “Yeh Chunky kaisa naam hai?” and cast me as Suyash Pandey, which was my name anyway. One day, he called me and said, ‘Let’s use Chunky, my kids like the name’. In the UK, Chunky means a person with a big rack, so I try not to use it there.
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