He has been in the industry for over two decades, yet the tag of ‘serial kisser’ refuses to leave Emraan Hashmi alone. Even as the actor has diversified his roles and widened his range with a wide variety of parts, every once in a while, the question of his kissing scenes from his early films comes up. In an interview with Hindustan Times recently, Emraan addressed this tag and admitted that he ‘juiced it to the hilt’ himself.
Emraan Hashmi on being typecast
Emraan admits he was pigeonholed into the bad-boy romantic hero image for much of his early career, but adds that this is not a phenomenon restricted to him. “I think this is not something that’s very specific to me as an actor. It’s happened to many people in the West. You’ve seen comic actors who probably have a problem breaking through. The classic example is Jim Carey. So I think people like to slot you.”
‘I was raking in that image’
Emraan made his acting debut with Footpath in 2003, but broke through with Murder the following year. His on-screen kisses with Mallika Sherawat made headlines at the time. The film followed a string of thrillers in which his bad-boy image and on-screen kisses were played up by the media, earning him the moniker “serial kisser.” Emraan admits that the image and the tag of ‘serial kisser’ did him a lot of good, though. “They were commercial successes, and I was also raking in that image. We were playing up to it through the marketing. The press was in on it.”
But after years of doing those roles, Emraan realised it was time for a switch when he saw a new audience coming in. “After a decade of doing it, I realised that the audience changes. They say, every 10 to 14 years, it switches. The next generation comes to the theatres. It’s very important to reinvent yourself for that fresh audience. And every character, every mould, reaches the saturation point. You can only juice it out as much. And I realised I juiced it to the hilt, yeah. So it was very important to me to switch,” he adds.
Emraan broke that image with romantic roles in films like Jannat and completely non-romantic character-driven outings in Awarapan and Shanghai. But even a decade after the switch, Emraan admits that he still gets questions about his on-screen kisses. “What happens is that when you have such a strong image, especially in a very conservative society like India, they will still hold on to it. Like, if you see people from the press conference the other day, there was still a question about the kiss that pops up. But that’s India. They are still obsessed with it,” he says with a smile.
Emraan says he has realised the only way to break the mould is to be versatile and show the audience more facets of your performance. He explains, “You have to go out there and just play in the front foot and do something to at least show your versatility. Just go out there and be daring with the stuff that you’re doing.”
Emraan Hashmi in Taskaree
Emraan was most recently seen as an honest customs officer in Neeraj Pandey’s Taskaree. The show, which also starred Sharad Kelkar and Zoya Afroz in lead roles, premiered on Netflix on January 19 and quickly became the most-watched non-English Netflix show worldwide.
