Angad Bedi: Trying to bring back the alpha male

Sharing his first look as an encounter specialist from MumBhai, Angad Bedi discusses how the action drama focuses on the organised crime of the '90s

arely done with the promotions for Inside Edge 2, Angad Bedi has reported to the shoot of his next, ALTBalaji's MumBhai. The crime drama, set in the '90s, traces the unlikely friendship between an encounter specialist and a gangster. As he shares his first look – replete with a moustache and a bulky frame – from the show, it is easy to gauge that Bedi's cop act is inspired by Daya Nayak.

The actor remains mum on his inspiration, instead veering the conversation to how the Akshay Chaubey-directed series will transport the audience back to the gritty days of the '90s when encounter shootouts were a regular feature in daily news. "The show has a '90s vibe to it. We are trying to bring back the alpha male. Back in the day, Sanjay [Dutt] sir owned the space along with Jaggu dada [Jackie Shroff] and Anil [Kapoor] sir," he says.

The past few months have seen the creative team hard at work as they fine-tuned the script of the crime drama and zeroed in on the on-screen avatars of Bedi and co-star Sikander Kher, who portrays an underworld don. "We consciously wanted to model my character on real people of the Mumbai police force. My character had to look like one of them," he explains, adding that he has altered his workout regimen to attain a heavy frame for the part. "I am beefing up for the role. Encounter specialists don't have six-pack abs, so that's not the look I am aiming for. I will make dietary changes and create a specialised regimen which will help me attain a bigger frame. I have been an athlete since my childhood, so I usually go about charting out my own regimen."

It won't be wrong to say that the audience has had its fill of cop dramas in Bollywood offerings, including the Dabangg series, Singham and Simmba. While the movies have often adopted a hyper-stylised treatment to make them entertaining, Bedi argues that his offering demands a starkly different tonality. "Our approach is real. The story, by design, has its cinematic moments, but we aren't aiming for men flying with punches. Such scenes work in a 70mm screen. With the fair amount of work I have done in digital entertainment, I have realised that the viewers I am catering to is completely different from the movie-going audience. This is an intimate set-up where the characters have to speak to every viewer. So the claptrap that works on a big screen doesn't work on the OTT shows. Our story is about the bravery of the men in uniform, but we are also humanising these larger-than-life characters and showing who they are beneath the grit and bravado."

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