Bobbyl: I see opportunity to play villain as godsent

After Prakash Jha’s web series ‘Ashram’ where Bobby Deol played a sleazy godman, and ‘

Love Hostel

’ where he was a ruthless assassin, the actor played the arch-villain to Ranbir Kapoor in Sandeep Vanga’s ‘Animal’. And that’s when Bobby’s career exploded. More recently he was the badman in the Tamil ‘Kanguva’ and the Telugu ‘Daaku Maharaj’.
Bobby says it is not a conscious career decision to play negative characters but it was a very calculated decision to play interesting characters. “I don’t look at characters as positive or negative. When I watch films there is always one character that stays with me. I want to play that character,” Bobby Deol said in his exclusive conversation with us.
Prakash Jha's ‘Ashram’ proved a game-changer for Bobby. He admitted that finding challenging roles before ‘Ashram’ was tough.
“My fans would ask why I wasn’t being seen on the screen. And I couldn’t tell them it was because I wasn’t getting good roles. But my fans stood by me. They gave me the strength to keep looking for the right roles. Thankfully I found the roles I liked. ‘Animal’ gave me some new fans. I am thankful I am still here. Yeah, I am in a good space right now. I give credit to Sandeep Reddy for seeing me in the role of the villain. He saw a picture of him and decided to sign me. I was not working those days. I was playing in the Celebrity Cricket League. That's where he saw me. He showed me the picture. He said, 'I am casting you because I love this expression of yours.' I have that picture. I had a beard. I think I am stuck with it. Everybody wants me with a beard.”

“I see the opportunity to play the villain as godsent. After ‘Ashram’ I played the badman in an OTT film ‘Love Hostel.’ It's so strange when I did ‘Love Hostel,’ they wanted to do a spinoff of my character. And now they want to do a spinoff of my character in Animal. I can't play caricature villains. I don't want to do that. I was offered a big film recently where I was asked to play uni-dimensional villains. I said no. I wouldn't be happy,” he concluded.