Banaras: Rishab Shetty suggested that I should meet director Jayathirtha, says Zaid Khan

Today, Kannada cinema welcomes a new leading man – Zaid Khan – into its fold with the Jayathirtha directorial Banaras. The sci-fi romantic drama, however, was not Zaid’s first attempt to set foot into the industry. A few years ago, director Indrajit Lankesh had announced that he would launch the youngster, but that project did not pan out.

In recent promotional interviews for Banaras, Zaid was asked why he chose to work with Jayathirtha on his launchpad. “My journey to get into film began seven years ago. In the time since, I must have met at least 150 filmmakers and had umpteen story narrations. If I’d get a good story, the director would not be up to the mark, or vice versa. And, by chance if both story and director work out and we begin pre-production, for some reason or the other it would get stalled. This went on for a while, until one day, Rishab Shetty told me about Jayathirtha. Rishab spoke of him highly and said that I ought to meet him once. This was just after Rishab had shot for Bell Bottom, even though it had not released in theatres,” explained Zaid, in an interaction with Cinibuzz.

Zaid eventually met Jayathirtha after Bell Bottom released and what struck him most about the filmmaker is that he understands the body language of the artiste he is working with. “For instance, if you are comfortable seated in a particular way, he will not ask you to change it according to how he wants, instead, he will create an environment to suit your comfort,” said Zaid. Over the next three months, though, although Jayathirtha and Zaid struck up a good rapport, there was no sign of a script that they could work on, which had the latter a tad worried. “Then, one fine day, he called me and said a script was ready. When I went and heard it, I knew this is exactly what I wanted, but I had to know why it took so long to come up with it. Jayathirtha explained that says that I am a newcomer, but one who comes with some baggage of being a well-known politician’s son. He also had an image about me in his mind, based on what he’d heard from others, so, he needed to form an opinion by watching me in close quarters and understanding me thoroughly, including my mannerisms, body language, etc. Jayathirtha even went to the extent to see what would get me to laugh, cry, or react to any given situation. And that is why he took three months to come up with a story that he was sure would suit me. I believe it does,” said the actor, adding candidly that to date, he has not seen any film by Jayathirtha, barring his own.