Actor Pankaj Tripathi is so famous that there are memes around his neck! And not just one or two memes, but there are several meme pages dedicated to how Tripathi can even enunciate via his neck. The 45-year-old actor’s popularity has risen over the last few years, and the actor feels the audience’s maturity has a big reason for that.
“Who knew the audience would notice your neck movements and talk about that (on the Internet)! Viewers have changed now and they now notice every small thing,” he says.
It wasn’t until some time had passed, that Tripathi got to know about his neck’s popularity only after the memes had gone viral. “I got to know very late that there were such memes and all (laughs). And most of the time as it happens, you can never really figure out the origin of that meme, but in my case, I found out that there is this young man, by the name of Naveen Kukreja from Mumbai, who made this meme. And yes, it was great,” he laughs.
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Tripathi and his neck (along with the rest of his body), will be soon seen in Kabir Khan’s ‘83’, based on the Indian Cricket team’s win at the 1983 World Cup under the captaincy of Kapil Dev.
“I don’t have any memories of us winning the World Cup, because we didn’t even have a radio at that time,” he says.
But the fact that he had no memories of it hardly had any impact on the way Tripathi prepared for his role of PR Man Singh since unlike Kapil Dev and his Devils, Singh’s contribution largely went unnoticed.
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“He wasn’t a player, so he wasn’t in front of this winning effort. Everyone knows about the contribution of the players, but no one knew about his contributions. He was the man behind the curtains. So, people don't know much about his contribution. Everyone will see what that was, now,” he says.
Tripathi’s secret to success is to act engagingly. It wasn’t easy, even if it appears so. For Tripathi, it has to have some meaning, even if it is as small as just a tilt of the neck. “Everything has got to do with your soul, and where it is coming from,” he says, adding that his endeavor as an actor is to not just act, but try and make the scene more engaging for the audience.
“It’s a lot to do with experience, time, and the knowledge of the craft. I won’t say there is pressure on me to perform, but it is more of a responsibility. People have expectations now, and so there is this responsibility to not disappoint,” he says.
“There’s a fine balance in finding flaws within a character, and also trying to find things that are good about him, or make him a better person. More so if it’s a slightly negative character I am playing. The idea is to find things that make that negative character a good person because I don’t believe that you are born as a totally negative character,” he signs off.
