At the trailer launch, the actor explained his approach to chanting 'Pakistan Zindabad' as a memory-loss agent who thinks he's Indian in the October 9 spy comedy.
Ayushmann Khurrana isn't dodging the question everyone's been asking about Udta Teer. At the trailer launch on Wednesday, September 24, he was asked directly whether it felt strange chanting 'Pakistan Zindabad' while playing a Pakistani agent on screen. His answer was blunt: an actor does what the script asks.
"That's part of the script ya. As an actor, you are ready to do anything," Khurrana said, according to Bollywood Hungama. He pointed out this isn't new territory for the spy genre generally, it's just that Udta Teer is playing it for laughs. "Spy comedy hai, patriotic comedy hai, genre bender hai," he said, adding that he reads the script first and trusts director Akash A Kaushik's writing before anything else.
The premise itself is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. Khurrana plays Bilal Ahmed, a Pakistani spy who loses his memory in the film but somehow keeps his patriotic instincts intact, minus the small detail of which country he's patriotic for. He ends up convinced he's Indian. That confusion between identity and loyalty is meant to be the engine of the comedy, not a political statement, at least going by how Khurrana framed it at the event.
Sara Ali Khan, who plays opposite him, spent her bit of the press interaction talking about a different kind of confusion, the on-screen kind. Udta Teer was actually shot before Pati Patni Aur Woh Do, where she and Khurrana also share the screen, and she said having such different dynamics with the same co-star back to back was a rare kick for her as an actor.
"Ek jagah aap unki life mein Tehelka banke aayi ho, ek jagah par aap inki wife hain," she said, describing how wildly her equation with Khurrana swings between the two films. "It was, honestly, so thrilling for me." Khurrana, for his part, kept it simple about working with her again: "It's always amazing working with Sara. She brings wonderful energy on set."
Udta Teer also marks a personal milestone away from the plot. It's writer Akash A Kaushik's directorial debut, and the cast around Khurrana and Ali Khan is stacked with veterans, Gulshan Grover, Ram Kapoor, Raghubir Yadav, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Smita Tambe, Brijendra Kala and Sandeep Anand among them. The film also carries one of late actor Mukul Dev's final performances, something the team addressed separately at the same trailer launch.
The trailer is out now. Whether audiences read the Bilal Ahmed act as harmless genre parody or something touchier will likely play out over the next fortnight, before Udta Teer lands in theatres on October 9.
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