Q. Your character in the film is very intriguing. Are you curious to know the audience’s reaction to it?
SRK: Yes, 100%! And more than just seeing the result, I want to see the audience enjoy themselves. I think both Aanand L. Rai and Himanshu [Zero’s scriptwriter] make very interesting and entertaining cinema. Having said that, the characters they create are very interesting too. The characters that we see in the film are not the hero type, and no pun intended, they are zero type.
The whole idea of the film is that how people in this world have incompleteness in them, all of us. [In the film] we have three people who have some kind of physical challenge, and the film is about how, despite their disabilities, they are celebrating life.
Q. Anushka, how challenging was your role, and how did you prepare for it?
Anushka: It was definitely challenging and that is something that attracted me to the role, apart from the story. The opportunity to work with Shah Rukh again, and with Ananad sir, whose work I really love, was a bonus. The challenge was to kind of portray the character correctly. To do it truthfully and as an actor. I have always tried to be honest with the roles that I have played.
Aanand Sir and Himanshu have done due diligence as far as the characterisation is concerned. They came to me with this role, knowing the condition, knowing the limitation, the implication it can have on a person’s life.
Aanand Sir made me very clear that at no point should the brilliance of this character, Aafia, be hidden. She is a very empowered character; she is somebody who’s just amazingly successful at what she does. And at the same time she has this want to find liveliness in life.
Q: In the film, the characters are telling us that no one is perfect in this world. The film portrays three different individuals and their imperfections. Do you believe that the film will be able to connect with people who aspire to be perfect?
SRK: The whole idea and concept is that we as people do spend time trying to think who we should be, could be and would be. Sometimes, we have our own complexes. Like if I have a complex about my nose, I am always going to be covering it. People tell us how we should be, what we could be. You always want to be taller, thinner, richer and happier. And we forget in this attempt to improve ourselves and that there is only one life. And we waste a lot of our life not living that life that the god blessed us with. Ek zindagi hai uske baad pata nahi punarjanam hoga ki nahi [We have just one life and we don’t know if we would ever be reborn]. We spend so much time in how we should be, what we could be, but all of us are incomplete in some way or the other. It could either be mentally, physically or emotionally.
So these three characters stand for these three forms of incompleteness. And we say, you are not incomplete, you are unique… So why wouldn’t you connect with it?!
“Zero” at times means nothing or can stand as a complete whole or can give you an opportunity to start everything all over again. If I was asked to start my life all over again, I would want to spend more time with my mother, or even say sorry to a few people and hug a little more and say, “Maybe, I spent too much time worrying”. So “zero” is also an opportunity to start all over again. And how many of us do get this opportunity?
Q. And it also becomes all the more relatable because superstar Shahrukh Khan is portraying a character like this. And you just said that you also have insecurities and that you also are not perfect…
SRK: I’ve a lot of imperfections. When I started off and even today to be truly honest, and Anushka knows me well enough and may have noticed that I don’t think I’m the best looking actor around and I don’t think I’m the best dancer. I don’t even think that I’m the best actor. But I know one thing that I want to act, not good or bad, I just want to act so I am focused and I’m happy doing it. I feel inspired despite my imperfections, despite not being a righteous person, and I think the world has accepted me. And when the world can accept a zero like me, I think it can accept everyone. When youngsters take drastic measures when they fail I really want to hold them, hug them and tell them, “Listen, don’t worry! I’ve failed more often than I can count in the movies, in my real life and in my everyday passage. And I’m still happy. Give life an opportunity and it will look after you.”