He's the cigar chomping bad man of films, OTT... And Manish Chaudhari is loving it

New Delhi, Sep 29 (PTI) He was the youngster who “walked out of Delhi and walked into Bombay”. Thirty years on, Manish Chaudhari has come to embody the urban villain - complete with cigar in hand and furrowed brow - of many a film and OTT show.

Chaudhari is the bully boss of "Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year", strongman newspaper editor of “Bombay Velvet”, the controlling brother and husband of “Aap Jaisa Koi”, the powerful gangster of “Aarya”. And now the tough talking movie mogul Freddy Sodawala in "The Ba***ds of Bollywood".

And the 56-year-old can’t be happier.

"The first 15 years in the industry were very hard. There was a lot of waiting, looking, hoping and angst about not being able to work as much as I wanted to. Then 'Rocket Singh' came and things changed. It's a difficult business if you don't know anybody when you come here. I had no clue about anything,” Chaudhari told PTI.

Basking in the attention his latest role is receiving, Chaudhari said he considers himself lucky to have nurtured his passion for acting and also create an identity for himself.

The actor said he grew up on a diet of Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis movies, and that’s what probably made him the actor he is today.

He completed his graduation from Delhi's Kirori Mal College and did his schooling from St Paul's School, Darjeeling. The acting bug bit when he was in school and he made tracks as soon as he left college.

"I was just a kid who walked out of Delhi and walked into Bombay. I don't think I had a phone number to call anybody, apart from one cousin. I didn't know anybody in the business. But I was lucky that I realised early on that acting is what I wanted to do. Now I'm doing it full time and the audience likes what I do. It is a great privilege," he added.

The actor's turn as the cigar-smoking studio head trying to keep his business profitable at any cost in "The Ba***ds of Bollywood", has become a pop culture phenomenon, leading to funny memes and reels on social media.

Chaudhari said he is enjoying the creativity of his fans who are mixing scenes from his many performances and putting them out on social media.

"It's nice to have tickled people's imagination to the point where they're like doing some really wonderful stuff… People have been making reels of different clips from Freddy's scenes and putting them together and sending them across on Instagram to me.” "Someone made a reel with 'Ba***ds...' and 'Rocket Singh' and then there a reel where my spa scenes in the show were mixed with a clip from 'Sanam Teri Kasam',” he laughed.

Chaudhari said Freddy has a great character arc. He gives full credit to director-writer Aryan Khan and co-writers Bilal Siddiqi and Manav Chauhan.

“I have been in the industry for 30 years now and I have dealt with all kinds of people: some lovely, some not so lovely. Freddy is an amalgamation of all these people." Chaudhari said he did not expect such clarity of vision from his director, the 27-year-old son of Shah Rukh Khan.

"A clear vision is a joy for any actor to work with because that means you're in very good and very safe hands because the director is the creator of that world. And as an actor, you're going to enter that world and you're going to then create and, hopefully, surprise the director and create for him and the audience. I just find that an amazing quality in Aryan considering how young he is." Chaudhari's villains are often seen with a cigar and Freddy is no exception.

The actor said he first smoked a cigar on screen for Anurag Kashyap's "Bombay Velvet" but it really became an inseparable part of his character in "Aarya". In the Sushmita Sen-fronted show, he played ruthless gangster Shekhawat.

"In the show, the cigar became a symbol of power. In fact, (show creator) Ram Madhvani spent a lot of money buying those cigars for me. And he made sure they were the best quality in the world. When I was filming my last scenes, one of his executive producers came up to me and joked, 'Do you know how much we've spent on your cigars'. I said, 'No, I don't want to know because I don't want to feel any guilt'." Recalling the Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson films he saw, he said the way he smokes cigars the way his heroes did.

"Right after 'Aarya', I did a film called 'The Ghost' With Nagarjuna sir. And Praveen Sattaru, the director, was very keen that I smoke cigars because he loved the way I smoked cigars in 'Aarya'.

“And Aryan, of course, was very keen that I smoke those cigars because the whole image of this person is that of a cigar-chomping studio head." With the popularity of "The Ba***ds of Bollywood", Chaudhari hopes fans discover some of his other roles like his character in "Bombay Begums". He played a senior bank official who harasses his female colleague.

"It is a great series and character and a role that was extremely difficult and icky to play. But I had to make him a real person and find empathy as an actor towards a character like that becomes very difficult but you have to do that... I have been lucky to have been supported fantastically by some wonderful writing and some great directors... The good thing about something working is that then the audience starts looking at your previous work." Chaudhari is reteaming with "Aap Jaisa Koi" director Vivek Soni for the next Dharma film and Imtiaz Ali's next. PTI BK MIN MIN