Kunal Kapoor: When I started my career, I found the characters very unrelatable

Kunal Kapoor has been in the Hindi film industry for 17 years now, and has done some 15-odd films so far, which is not too many, surprisingly . But the actor insists that it was all a well-thought-of decision.

The 43-year-old, who made his debut with Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, in 2004 says, “When I started off, two things happened. One, when you are successful, everybody wants to box you and cast you in similar roles, which was something I did not want to do. Secondly, the content in the industry has changed a lot in the last 15 years. When I was starting out, I found the characters very unrelatable.”

Explaining further, he asserts that roles back then were divided into plain good and bad. “I found them as hero was a hero, villain was a villain, there was nothing in between. Every film made was about aspirational NRI characters that were wearing particular kind of clothes, everything was shot outside India. Those were characters I honestly didn’t get, I was looking for ones that were more relatable and flawed. What’s happened in the last few years is that more of these characters are being written,” says Kapoor, crediting content creators for writing them, and the audience for accepting them.

Recently, he found such a role in the web show The Empire, in which he played the role of Mughal Emperor Babur. And, he has been receiving praise for it.

“The way he was written, he was very flawed, not somebody who was strong, but weak too and vulnerable. 15 years back, if a character like this would have been written, it would have been in a different way. That to me was something I was looking for. The response has been overwhelming. We expected it to get a good response, but this has really surprised us,” concludes the actor.