Madhavan was stumped when Aamir asked him play the 'perfect boyfriend', 'perfect son' in a 9 min role in Rang De Basanti

R Madhavan's small but impactful role in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s acclaimed Rang De Basanti remains as memorable for the audiences as the rest of the cast. The actor whose character dies in the film and sets the plot in motion has said that it was after having done this project he realized the value of well-written and present characters.

The 3 Idiots star also revealed he was initially supposed to essay Siddharth’s character in the film but ultimately settled for a role that lasted only 9 minutes in screen time. To add to all of this Madhavan sought permission from the filmmaker to underplay his character and keep it closer in personality to how he is in real life. The actor hoped that this would make his death in the film seem more personal to the audience, he said in an interview with Film Companion.

Well, we have to say Madhavan’s ingenious idea worked and made not just the other characters feel the loss but also made the audience watching the film emotional.

“In Rang De Basanti I had a nine-minute role. I was supposed to do Siddharth’s role but I couldn’t because I had long hair, and I ended up doing the pilot’s role. Big revelation in my life, because even now when they speak about Rang De Basanti, my name is synonymous with that film, for a nine-minute appearance. And these gentlemen, who worked so hard for one-and-a-half years, and I only worked for eight days, I think. And I realised that immortality in terms of being recognised as a character depends on how you play that character, and how that character is written and presented,” Madhavan can be heard saying.

When Aamir Khan asked Madhavan to skip Siddharth’s role to play Flight Lieutenant Rathod, Madhavan was in a fix given how perfect his character was. Talking about his conundrum he added,  “When I heard that narration from Rakeysh and Aamir, I was like, ‘Guys, you’re asking me to be a perfect boyfriend, a perfect son, a perfect patriot, a perfect friend with an almost legendary sort of reputation, for all these guys to go and give their lives up for him.’ Everyone knows you need one movie to show that you are a perfect boyfriend or a perfect son. You need an entire movie to show that! So, I was telling Rakeysh, ‘How do you expect me to do justice to this? I’ve only been doing films for five years.’ So, he said, ‘That’s why I’ve come to you, Maddy, what the hell.’” 

Well, as we look back that the film there’s certainly no other actor we can think of who could have created the impact with this role as Madhavan did. To top it all off, the makers found Siddharth who was perfect in every way for the role which was apparently bumped by a lot of actors.