'Ek Villian' was like a therapy for my issues: Sidharth Malhotra

A fun start to the event saw a man walking in wearing a smiley mask, and audience was asked to guess which villain was he, between Ritesh Sidharth. Both the stars didn’t let the man take off his mask, and joked this was Ritesh without make-up! The film is scheduled to release on June 27.

Though director Mohit Suri and Riteish Deshmukh were not present at the press conference, Shraddha and Sidharth handled it quite well.

Talking about the film, Sidharth says, “Ek Villain is a love story of a villain who does bad things. Both Riteish and me are playing negative characters, but I am much louder in my actions and compared to me, Riteish’s character is unassuming!” To this Shraddha jokingly added, “Even I could be a villain for all you know, one week before the release, we will change the name of the movie to ‘teen villain’!”

Moving away from his chocolate boy image, Sidharth is playing a gangster in the film. Not afraid to take risks so early in his career, he shares, “It’s been a fulfilling experience for me as an actor. Guru is not a regular guy and there’s a reason why he’s this way. Having witnessed a murder when he was a child, he has a depressive side to his personality. This was a very tough role, as most of Mohit Suri’s films are pre-crime, post-crime or ‘while crime’, and this character required me to be very angry, and I ended up doing lot of physical stunts and sometimes these heavy emotions rub off on you. I’ve taken out 29 years of my bhadaas, be it anger issues, parental issues, struggling issues, hopefully I’ve dealt with all my issues... the film was like a therapy.” He adds, “The plus point is Mohit knows what he wants from you. So, he’s there to tell you if you’re going over the top, or need to balance it out. Sometimes, for doing the action continuity shots, I’d do push ups to make my body look bulked up, I tried new things in the film. Since it’s a grey shade, it was all the more challenging as after Student of the Year (SOTY), this role is a contrast from what I’ve done before.”

Both the actors’ first films were poles apart. While Sidharth’s SOTY was a mega hit, Shraddha’s Teen Patti was a flop. Taking things in her stride, Shraddha shares that having witnessed failure early in her career, she knows what it feels like to be low. “I’ve had the best start in the industry. I tasted failure early and it prepared me to handle a film like Aashiqui 2. Now, I want to work a lot harder.” When questioned about Riteish mentioning in an interview that Ek Villain was mentally taxing for him, both Sidharth and Shraddha agree in unison. Shraddha says, “It was a verbal torture. Aisha is a non-stop talker and in real life no one can be like her.” While Sidharth concludes, “All of us went through mental torture. While Aisha yaps a lot, I have very few lines in the film and mind you, it’s more difficult to emote than speak.”