Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh's Chinmay Mandlekar: It's a golden opportunity to play an ideologically extreme character

Making his mark with an exceptional performance as a terrorist in his last release, The Kashmir Files, Marathi actor Chinmay Mandlekar is back on the big screen with the upcoming Rajkumar Santoshi directorial, Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh.

In the film, he plays Nathuram Godse, was an extreme believer in Hindutva, which is the opposite of Mahatma Gandhi - who he killed - believed in.

When the actor was asked how it was to play such ideologically opposite characters in The Kashmir Files and Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh, Chinmay said, "If we look at the texture of the roles, then yes, these two characters are extreme, and it is a golden opportunity for an actor to play such roles. In one film, I play a Muslim extremist and in another, I play a man with a dream to build a Hindu rashtra. So, for an actor, it is a dream come true. If you are asking about the ideological extremes -- I am in the center, I am neither here nor there. In my mind, there is space for everybody and everything. As an actor, I am happy to work with wonderful filmmakers."

In the Vivek Agnihotri directorial The Kashmir Files, Chinmay played a Muslim extremist named Faruq Malik Bitta, who was based on two real-life characters - Vitta Karate and Yasin Malik, who engineered the ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandit community from the Valley by brutally killing them and forcing them to flee from their own land.

In Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh, Chinmay plays Nathuram Godse, who was a Hindu nationalist and member of the Hindu Mahasabha, who harboured the dream of building a Hindutva nation, while it was Gandhi's dream to have a secular India. Eventually, Godse killed Gandhi due to the ideological difference, and it was an act that he was very proud of.

Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh is directed by Rajkumar Santoshi, and also stars Deepak Antani, Pawan Chopra, Anuj Saini, Sharad Singh and Arif Zakaria. It is slated to release in theatres on January 26.