Varun Dhawan: Club Sandwiches, American Psycho And Clichéd World Cup Predictions

Varun Dhawan does a lot of things but unpredictable football World Cup predictions isn’t one of them.

Varun Dhawan is taking it easy. There doesn’t seem to be any hurry to get anywhere or an obsessive need to prove himself. The only thing he does seem to be in a hurry about though is finishing his club sandwich. This also means that conversations seem like conversations – not pre-fed scripted answers, each carefully devised to drive the conversation in the manner that his agents deem fit. We meet him at a Mumbai hotel over a strictly average club sandwich and dive headfirst into a chat about American Psycho, blood fountains and cliched World Cup predictions.

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In the interest of full disclosure we tell him we don’t normally interview men. “Then this must be boring for you,” he laughs. It’s not. But yeah we bite into a limp French Fry and carry on. Predictably enough, football comes up.

He used to play “a lot of football with his friends” but that was before cinema happened. Not that it was a surprise that it did – considering he is David Dhawan’s son (the man who made Govinda’s career besides movies like Coolie No 1, Hero No 1 and a bunch of other movies with the same moniker). These days it’s mostly football on his PS3. “Yeah I have been meaning to upgrade. Don’t judge…how are the graphics though?” We tell him we have the hand-eye coordination of a zebra, he laughs and explains “I do know who is going to win though...the World Cup.”

And he says it in a hushed tone almost like he was telling you something confidential, usually the sort of report that comes from inside sources and usually has the capacity, if not to destabilise governments at least to make you a pile of money. “It’s Brazil,” he says.

BRAZIL! Just because they are the host country? We tell him how absurdly predictable that is – Indians have always supported Brazil and Argentina at a World Cup – even in 2010 when they lost to the Dutch, or the World Cup before that or the World Cup before that.

“But it’s different this year. Look at the team…they have Neymar,” he explains. And who are we going to support if they crash out? Netherlands like last time because they wear orange jerseys? “Probably, we are the only ones in the world who go ‘Oh that was my second choice!’

Since the World Cup predictions aren’t going anywhere, we ask him about his career? After all a song called ‘Satuuuurday’ (essentially Saturday with an exaggerated ‘U’) which is a non Yo Yo Honey Singh rendition of Yo Yo from a movie called Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania is suddenly the party anthem. It’s a movie that he stars in opposite Aalia Bhatt. “It’s a love story – not a romcom. But a proper love story with heartbreak, anguish and all that,” he explains.

We ask him what side of the fence he sits in, considering he did romance not one but two ladies (Illeana D’ Cruz and Nargis Fakhri) in his last movie – Main Tera Hero – a movie delightfully up there with father David Dhawan’s original filmmaking sensibilities. A movie which besides showing off the rather delightful figures of its two leading heroines also established him as a sort of new-age Govinda. We ask him where he stands in the industry where the heroes are oscillating wildly between being Mass, being alternate, being Mass but Pulp, being Mass but not too mass and about a dozen other sub-genres. “We’ve started talking about mass movies as pulp movies because of the multiplexes. But for me as an actor why should I be doing any one as opposed to a good blend of both?”

To keep up his end of the deal and the blend between mass and alternate/pulp, he’s working on a movie called Badlapur directed by Sriram Raghavan (who made Ek Haseena Thi, Johnny Gaddar and Agent Vinod) which has him playing three generations and if reports are to be believed also has a new take on one of Indian cinema’s sauciest wet sari songs – Tip Tip Barsa paani with Huma Qureshi (the original one had Raveena Tandon and a mullet-clad Akshay Kumar).

“It’s a movie we’re going all out in,” he explains. By ‘all out’ he means a take on a ‘thriller dabbling’ with a bit of Gore. He can’t obviously talk more about the film. To be fair to him, we aren’t exactly the most discreet people with spoilers either (remember, our spoiler feature with Game Of Thrones Season 4?).

“A film that had major influence on me was American Psycho. I loved that movie. I saw it when I was 16. Christian Bale is one of my favourite actors. But when acting you can’t just do that one thing because then you can’t explore your entire range as an actor. I’d like to dabble in diff genres,” he explains. He did love Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds and ‘everyone loves Kill Bill’.

As luck would have it, the chat shifts to the club sandwich he is thramming and it’s almost magical properties in absorbing alcohol after a night of binge drinking. “Actually, I haven’t been out partying for a really long time. Maybe I’ll let loose for a day soon…get arrested,” he laughs.

In the meantime, he is talking about skin efficacy. Varun Dhawan has just signed on to be the face of Pond’s Men and he is talking passionately about a facewash with coffee extract which can re-charge your skin for even a late night out partying. “Today’s day and life is very hectic. It’s not about 10 hour days. It’s sometimes 12, sometimes 15 or even 20. It’s crazy. For that you need something that doesn’t let the battery of your face go down. Just like you have a portable charger for your phone, shouldn’t there be something similar for your skin as well?” “We are saying don’t use too many things. You use one facewash and one oil free moisturizer and you are good.”

We ask him what’s happening on the girl front? Considering he needs his skin to look like a million bucks even late at night, he’d hardly be doing that for a night out with his football gang. He just smiles, “It’s all goooood in the hood.” He is too busy to date though, there’s girls but he is not ready for a commitment. Not just yet. Even if he was, he is not ready to talk about it. In the meantime, a lady from the management arrives to remind us, that we’ve overshot the allotted time so much, that it’s a spec and the others waiting in line to interview Mr Dhawan are having king-size hissy fits. Tattoos? This one is influenced from Samoan culture, he explains about the one on his shoulder. It has my entire life history and all that. At 27, he better have kept a lot of empty space, especially how his career is going.

Did you know? Karan Johar’s Student of the Year (2012) wasn’t Varun’s first Bollywood assignment. Prior to it, Dhawan had worked as an assistant director to Karan Johar on his directorial My Name Is Khan (2010).

Apart from a sequel to ABCD: Any Body Can Dance, Varun’s most awaited film is Sriram Raghavan’s revenge drama Badlapur in which he will play triple roles, including that of a 60-year old man.

Varun Dhawan is the brand ambassador for Pond’s Men.

From the July 2014 issue of FHM India.