We killed it!’ That, Raghav Juyal tells us, is the gist of the countless messages director Aryan Khan and he have been exchanging since The Ba***ds of Bollywood dropped on Netflix a fortnight ago. “We tell each other, ‘Bhai, yeh toh hona hi tha’. I don’t know about others, but Aryan and I were confident that the show would be well-received,” says Juyal of Khan’s directorial debut. 

The Bobby Deol, Mona Singh, Lakshya, and Sahher Bambba-starrer has many things going for it — its tongue-in-cheek humour, sincere performances by the leads, and star-studded cameos. Juyal’s act as Parvaiz, part problem-fixer and part troublemaker, stands out with its hilarity. Yet, he reveals that many advised him against portraying the role after Kill (2023), which saw him as a ruthless antagonist. “Everyone asked me, ‘Why are you playing the hero’s best friend?’ I told them that I would handle it. It’s the actor’s job to make the character his own. I created a lot of things on the spot, [aspects] that weren’t in the script, and Aryan would say, ‘Keep it coming. It’s good.’ When we sat to make a scene, we’d go in so many directions that producers would have to put a stop to it,” he laughs.