Pankaj Tripathi has impressed the audience with his acting prowess in films like Gangs of Wasseypur franchise (2012), Newton (2017) and Stree (2018) and web series such as Mirzapur and Sacred Games 2. However, the actor claims that he consciously decided to not take up certain parts that would showcase fake masculinity. Talking about it, he told a leading daily, “I will never sell the idea of fake masculinity through my work. I’m completely against portraying a man who is told that ‘kyun ladkiyon ki tarah ro raha hai or mard ko dard nahi hota’,” adding, “Even when it comes to playing a bad guy, I’m fine with it, but if you ask me to do a scene which involves child abuse, I’ll never do it no matter what money is offered to me.”
Clarifying that he doesn’t mean at all that the character he’s portraying necessarily need to sound preachy, Pankaj explained, “Kahani mein kuch kirdaar bure bhi hote hai but one has to see what the intention behind showing a bad guy is. Sometimes, we do such parts to add satire. I’m silently working on the changes that I want to see in the society through the mode of entertainment. Going forward, I’d rather do a role where I’d get to showcase what it means to be a real man or a gentleman."
Mentioning that the facade of fake masculinity needs to broken and it the onus of the storyteller to send out the right message through cinema, the actor concluded by saying, “Cinema ko entertainment ki tarah dekhna chahiye, kisi andolan ki tarah nahi, but somewhere the thought impacts the audience, which in turn creates a mindset — good or bad. So, I want to be a responsible entertainer who can seamlessly inject positive thoughts in people’s mind."
(Source: Hindustan Times)
