It Is My Most Physically Challenging Film: Vicky Kaushal on ‘Uri’

The surgical strikes in Uri had left the country shaken when they took place a little over two years ago. Its apparent impact on the film industry was the ban on Pakistani artistes which reportedly lead to actors like Fawad Khan being forced to return to Pakistan. One could have not imagined that this would have led to the genesis of Aditya Dhar’s Uri.

Vicky Kaushal who plays the lead character said, “Aditya was going to make a film, his first film was going to be with Fawad. At the time when the Uri attacks happened, he had already gone to Pakistan and he could never return and his film got shelved for many other reasons as well. And then he went back to Delhi and started researching about the reason his film got shelved which was the Uri attack, and he started researching more about it and he developed a script on it because he found a story there.”

The project naturally lent itself to a physically gruelling filming period. Vicky injured himself quite badly, and had to perform extremely challenging sequences. He said, “This is the most physically exhausting film that I have done till date.”

Yami Gautam who also stars in the film, plays an intelligence officer and wanted to ensure that the character doesn’t seem like a caricature. She said, “The character will not come from any external source, it will come from within you, you have to make her. You have to get her from inside you and that’s the only way you are going to be effortless, you’re going to be that person on screen. Otherwise it will look very pretentious.”

Speaking of the Armed Forces, Vicky said, “For the film itself, everyday we used to be in awe of them because we were even trying to be like them, we just had to portray their lives and it was so tough, they are actually living that life. That thought made me respect them even more. I hope that’s something all of us take away from the film.”

Uri stars Vicky Kaushal and Yami Gautam and will release on 11 January 2019.