Pankaj Tripathi on his character Kaleen Bhaiya
Mirzapur 2 is a hit and Pankaj Tripathi’s performance is being praised by both the audiences and critics. Although onscreen it is difficult to even figure out that Pankaj Tripathi is anyone but Kaleen Bhaiya, but in real life, there are still some facts about the character which the ace actor wasn’t aware of.
Yes, Pankaj Tripathi shared a little incident where he discovered one of the main traits of Kaleen Bhaiya in season 2. And none other than the series’ director Gurmeet Singh told him this.
While talking to India Film Project, he said, "On day 1 of Mirzapur 2 shooting, my director (Gurmmeet Singh) told me, 'Pankaj ji, aap aisa nahi karte the season one mein.' When I asked him what he meant, Gurmeet explained, 'In season one, Kaleen Bhaiya would not let the audience know whether he was convinced by someone's idea or not. His character was so unpredictable that no one could figure out whether he liked Munna's idea or not. But this time, you are giving out that unpredictability so easily.' Surprisingly, they themselves discovered this on the editing table as Guru told me this thing wasn't there in the writing. Then they showed me one of my scenes from season one and I finally figured out one of the main traits of Kaleen Bhaiya's character."
Talking about the preparing for his role, he further added, "I'm 45 years old. If I take 2-3 months to prepare for a certain role, my 45 years of preparation as an actor gets added to it. So if you will ask me to analyse my performance, I may do it for the sake of it but I feel we all add our acting and life experiences to our parts in one way or the other. Having said that, it can happen that one actor might have a lot of life experience while his or her co-star could be on the first day of the job. I feel if our co-actor doesn't have as much experience, then you must help them. For me, before being a co-actor, that person is a fellow human being, a box, full of dreams, which is being opened for the first time. So you should protect, support that person."
