Pankaj Tripathi: ‘Fun to explore when a powerful man falls’

Pankaj Tripathi

What happens when a king is dethroned? Through his character Kaleen bhaiyya, Pankaj Tripathi has shown the fall of power and its repercussions in the latest season of Mirzapur. That the character was the criminal overlord in the past two seasons, makes his loss of power all the more dramatic. "Kaleen bhaiyya is weak this time, struggling to survive. The joy of doing this character lies in seeing how it feels when he is not in his element. It's fun to explore when a man that powerful falls. I enjoyed his internal conflicts. At one point [in the season], it almost feels that he will become a spiritual man. When Guru [Gurmmeet Singh, director] gave me the narration, that's what I loved," says Tripathi, who has been leading the Ali Fazal, Shweta Tripathi Sharma and Rasika Dugal-starrer since its inception in 2018.
One of the bigger reasons for the actor, who hails from Bihar, to feature in the Prime Video crime thriller was to depict people from the heartland correctly on screen. "The bahubalis of Purvanchal have always been represented in a filmy fashion. Kaleen bhaiyya had to be done in a unique way - he is soft-spoken; he is polite on the face, but deep down, he is grey. It's my default mode to observe the world around me, and interesting things are imprinted in my subconscious mind. I find it impossible to pinpoint which elements of Kaleen bhaiyya come from where."

Tripathi's journey of interpreting characters in his own way continues with his next, Criminal Justice 4. "Acting is not a means to make money for me. Every character teaches me what is inside me, what I have won and lost. Madhav Mishra [his lawyer character] will return soon. We have wrapped up shooting," he says.