Milap Milan Zaveri: Riteish Deshmukh was roped in for 'Marjaavaan' even before Sidharth Malhotra and me

Getting the right cast is of paramount importance for any film. We often hear of makers racking their brains over finalising their actors. However, for director Milap Milan Zaveri, casting his villain in '

Marjaavaan

' was the easiest part of the job. By his own admission, Riteish Deshmukh, who plays the unconventional villain — a vertically challenged Vishnu — was the first actor to come on board even before the director and the hero (Sidharth Malhotra).

Milap tells us, “When I conceived the character of Vishnu, I went to Riteish with the part. He was the first person to be locked even before I came on board as the director or Sidharth as the hero. He asked me why we had approached him with the part and I replied, ‘To begin with, you haven’t played a negative role after 'Ek Villain', and secondly, Vishnu is someone with a wicked sense of humour’. I told him that I needed him to make the humour work, and at the same time, we were certain that he would do a swell job as an actor for the devious part of it.”

Talking about the character of Vishnu, Milap adds, “He is teen foot ka kameenapan aur chhe foot ki akad. Theoretically, he may be challenged, but he feels that he is stronger than the tallest and strongest person alive. I have not used his character for sympathy. In fact, his character is even more arrogant than the hero. We have enough villains with big built, who are fighting the hero. In this film, Sidharth (Malhotra) and Riteish never physically fight with each other. How can he beat up a midget? It doesn’t make sense. But the deviousness, the one-upmanship, the combat and the war they have is more about mind and a lot of other things. He was one of the most interesting characters for me to write. We shot his scenes using a mix of old-school techniques and new age VFX. For most parts, Riteish would walk on his knees."

'Marjaavaan', produced by Bhushan Kumar, Divya Khosla Kumar, Krishan Kumar (T-Series) and Monisha Advani, Madhu Bhojwani and Nikkhil Advani (Emmay Entertainment), releases on November 15.