A film for any actor is lots of hard work and sweat, in the literal sense too. While we get so mesmerized seeing our actors look stunning on the screen there is a huge entourage that plays an important role in achieving the desired look. Even when I saw Ranbir Kapoor in a rugged, raw avatar in the trailer and songs of Shamshera, I was simply mind blown. He is looking every bit a brut and while it is kudos to the actor, his lifestyle coach Kunal Gir also deserves applause. Recently, I spoke to Kunal about how Ranbir became Balli in Shamshera and there was an amazing transformation journey he took me through.
Read the excerpts from the interview here:
On the process…
It was pretty amazing, Ranbir is very easy to work with. What I liked about him was that he was very punctual, he would always understand the reasoning behind what we are doing and why we are doing it. That makes my job easier, also in Shamshera he was very clear about the look. It is going to be very rustic, it isn’t a city chic look, he is a runaway, a rebel, so we had to make sure that he did looked to chiseled or polished. We wanted to have that brut look to him that makes him look very rugged and masculine.
On the workout regime…
The workout we followed was probably strength gaining, we had access to his home gym which had very limited equipment so we had to be creative in what we had. We used to modify and change the workouts based on the limited availability. The cardio was also something very unique and improvised, so the treadmill would be shut and we would just make him run on it like he is just pushing a truck or something very heavy. We would limit that to an action by turning the treadmill off. That was very high intensity and allowed burning a lot of fat in a small amount of time. Time was a major concern, he couldn’t sit in the gym for 3 hours, he had to be in and out of the gym within 45 minutes. Keeping these constraints and his active life in mind we had to make the most of what we had and it worked out because the character designed was not very heavy or big or a body builder.
On his diet…
Diet is very critical to build muscle and burn fat, so he had to eat on time, had specific meals. He was not able to eat junk food or processed food, the portions were weighed out. Not to drink water during meals because that would bloat him up, eat vegetables before eating chicken, stuff like that were monitored. He had about 5-6 meals a day, when he was on the go, he would either have a protein bar or a milkshake, but most of the times he was adherent enough to carry his meals. We would carry his meals; I gave him a bag that could store six meals in an insulated environment. So we would pack all his meals and he would carry that. It had to be that way, we couldn’t rely on outside food.
On the result…
I was with him during the shoot, so I was too involved on actually having an outside point of view, there was no surprise. I was there on a day to day basis, so it would be easy for me to forget how far he has come, that is why we kept taking pictures to track his progress. Whatever we attained for Shamshera in that moment was normal, but I remember Ranbir pointing out certain things. In his shower he would notice these muscles and cuts, then he started taking longer showers, that had become like a joke about how he would admire himself in the mirror for a longer time.
Directed by Karan Malhotra, Shamshera releases in theatres this Friday 22nd July, it also stars Sanjay Dutt and Vaani Kapoor in pivotal roles.