Sexy and good looks give an antagonist the advantage of being forgiven by audiences, a phenomenon that has often occurred in Bollywood. The same can’t be said about Vikas Verma, who plays the character of Charles Diwan, in Sridevi-starrer Mom. The actor has been getting calls and messages from friends and family saying, “Charles, I hate you so much. You deserved that from Sridevi.” But Vikas has been happy with these messages and says, “Such hateful comments for my character means I have acted really well.”
This is the actor’s third film who was earlier seen in Yaariyan and Shaandaar in negative roles. But it’s Mom that has gotten him the attention. “Mom was something else. The star cast was really big with Sridevi, Akshaye Khanna and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. I was a nobody. Everyone thought I was just another model. Ravi (Udyawar, the director) sir had seen me in Shaandaar and he cast me in the role,” he says. Though the spotlight is on the bigger stars in the film, there’s a reason why Vikas has been noticed — his strong performance. The actor reveals he was given a number of documentaries and films like The Wolf of Wall Street as refer-ences for his role. “I had to work on this character for six months. But Ravi sir too got the best out of me, he kept pushing me to do more and more till he wasn’t satisfied with what I did. But my most cherished memory about the film is the day I shot with Srideviji. When she said her dialogue, ‘bula apni maa ko’ (call your mother), I was watching her stunned,” reminisces Vikas.
The actor will now be seen in Judwaa 2 sharing screen space with Varun Dhawan and Taapsee Pannu. Here again he plays a antagonist, but the actor is unafraid of being typecast as the baddie. “I love this space, there’s so much to do in a negative role. In Shaandaar, I played a negative character with a comic tangent. People were laughing even as they hated the character. In Mom, I played an extremely sarcastic-negative character. I love the scope these roles offer and there are not many good-looking villains in the industry (he laughs). In Judwaa 2, I play a villain again, but a good looking one,” he signs off.
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