Ali Fazal reveals his 3 Idiots role sent him into a depression, recalls calling Rajkumar Hirani: 'I was crushed'

Actor Ali Fazal has revealed that he went into a depression after appearing in the 2009 film 3 Idiots. Ali said that he was crushed after the press asked him questions about his character in the film, whose arc seemed to mirror a tragic real-life incident.

Ali Fazal played the character of Joy Lobo in 3 Idiots, a student who had a passion for machines. In the movie, after Dr Viru 'Virus' Sahastrabuddhe, played by Boman Irani, tells Joy that he will not graduate, Joy takes his own life.

In an interview with Peeping Moon, Ali said, "I slipped into depression when I started with 3 Idiots. I played a small role in it. Do you know what happened? Suddenly they were doing some news pieces, not to sound morbid or anything but at that time, some college students had harmed themselves, and then I got a call from some news channel saying, ‘Sir, you’ve played this role and this is exactly what has happened. How do you feel about it?’ and I was crushed at that point. I was naive, I was in my second year of college. I went into depression and I told Raju sir (Rajkumar Hirani) and all these people and they said, ‘please don’t do this. Tell them to talk to the producer and don’t feel like this'."

"Obviously, they were very sweet about it and I used to suddenly start associating that I couldn’t explain much in a small role. I wish and hope I get a big role so that then I can take them through the whole journey and tell you no, this is not what I meant to do. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. Of course, it was coming from a very naive place," Ali added.

Meanwhile, Ali will feature next in Ray, Netflix's anthology on legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray's stories. Featuring stories by Abhishek Chaubey, Srijit Mukherji and Vasan Bala, Ray will premier on the streamer on June 25 and will present four tales of love, lust, betrayal and truth. Ali appears in Forget Me Not, alongside Shweta Basu Prasad and Anindita Bose.