Adivi Sesh on Dacoit, what pan-India means to him and why he writes his own stories

Adivi Sesh is still celebrating. Sitting down for a conversation with India Today on a Tuesday, he pauses mid-answer to mention that Dacoit just crossed 6,000 tickets an hour on BookMyShow. The film has only been out a few days, and he's clearly still riding the wave. But beneath the box office excitement is a man who thinks very carefully about why he makes what he makes, and for whom.

Love and revenge, always together

Dacoit: A Love Story has been described as a love story first and a revenge drama second. Sesh, who has also written the film apart from starring in the title role, is clear about the interplay of emotions.
"Love and revenge are intertwined. Dil toota isliye toh revenge chahiye (heartbreak leads to revenge). They came together because they were always together," he said.

The challenge, he said, was never the genre blend but the emotional truth underneath it. "Simple people, when they go into the theatre, they probably have the pressures of their own lives — their job, their studies etc. There's a certain way in which they watch a film, and my goal was that it should feel emotionally honest to such a person who walks in off the street and just sits there hoping for two hours of the dream," he added.

Writing with your best friend

Dacoit marks Sesh's collaboration with debutant director Shaneil Deo, who also co-wrote the film with the actor. The dynamic, Sesh admitted, was very much that of two brothers — equal parts creative partnership and friendly argument.

"He's my best friend, so when we agree we agree, and when we disagree we fight like brothers. Sometimes on set you might hear — arrey yaar, aisa nahi hai yaar. Shaneil has that very UP Bhojpuri Hindi when he speaks, he's not a Telugu speaker, and I think in Telugu. So it would always be like banter between two brothers. That's how we made this film," he said.

Som, where does the writer end and the actor begin? Sesh is refreshingly unbothered. "I'm not too troubled by that separation. I'm not too self-involved. I would look at my monitor — is the scene working or not — but ye nahi dekhta hoon ki yaar mera hair kaisa hai, meri aankhe kaise hain, the right amount of aansoo has come out of the eye or not. Main woh sab nahi dekhta hoon. Does it work as a scene? In my mind, I'm always that guy — the simple person eating popcorn who walked in off the street," said Sesh.

Pitching a role at a wedding

One of the more delightful stories around Dacoit is how Anurag Kashyap was cast at Naga Chaitanya and Sobhita Dhulipala's wedding in Hyderabad. Sesh explained the connection.

"The mutual for us is Sobhita. She was my heroine in two films, Goodachari and Major, and her first film was also with Anurag sir. That's how we met. You know how it is at a wedding — rasmein hain (there are rituals). You have a couple of hours of just taking in the festivities and maybe eating a little bit. We were just talking to each other, started in a tent nearby, and the next thing you know, the selfish movie guy in me pitched him the film," Sesh shared.

When Adivi Sesh exploded on screen

Critics have noted that Dacoit features Sesh at his most emotionally open, more expressive, more extroverted than the controlled, interior characters he's known for. He agrees, and traces it back to the DNA of the character himself.

He said, "Hari (his character in the film) is a very extroverted, bindaas character. I've always played internal characters. In Major, everything he feels you only see in his eyes, and there's a certain military precision to his body language. Whereas in Dacoit — woh jo feel karta hai, ekdum dildaar, dil khol ke baat karta hai. Woh shirt failaake baat karta hai, chillaata hai, rota hai, hasta hai, joke maarta hai toh gaali ke saath. It's quite refreshing. Years of me not expressing my feelings just exploded in one moment."

What pan-India really means

Sesh has been releasing bilingual films consistently, but when asked what pan-India means to him beyond box office numbers, he reaches for a very specific memory from Gorakhpur during the promotions of Dacoit — where he had collaborated with Bhojpuri superstar Pawan Singh on a song called Touch Buddy.

"A few people started coming and saying some dialogues to me, and I didn't know — yaar, yeh kaun se movie ke dialogues hain? And they said, Sir, nahi pehchana? Yeh aapke movie ke dialogues hain. That's when I realised they were reciting my own lines back to me, and the love they had was extraordinary. And the moment they asked me to say something in Bhojpuri and I spoke something in Bhojpuri — immediately, jis kism ka apnapan aaya na, they just hugged me. That's what pan-India means to me," added Sesh.

Freedom over formula

Despite building a strong market identity, Sesh says he doesn't let economics dictate his creative choices. What he's chasing is something harder to quantify. He said, "I have no hang ups about any kind of cinema. I hope to get to a place where I have the freedom to do a Rs 1000 crore film and a Rs 10 crore film in the same year — that's what I aspire to, because that's what's beautiful. It's not — itne paise kama liye, agle film mein aur paise kamana hain. I don't come from that."

Fans hoping to see him in romance territory will be pleased to know that the actor has two love stories in the upcoming line-up of films that won't be quite as violent as Dacoit. He grinned, "Yeah, and this time maybe not so violent."

Writing because great scripts are rare

Sesh became a writer-actor early in his career, and the reason, he said, was simple necessity. "Achhi kahaniyaan chahiye thi yaar. As a lead actor, you want great scripts, and it's not easy — there's not a buffet of great ideas anywhere in the world. A great idea becoming a great script, then becoming a great film — that's a miracle. So I just wanted to give it my all to make that happen. Unfortunately, it's worked out," said the HIT 2 actor.

Goodachari 2 and what's next

On the most-asked question — Goodachari 2 — Sesh is cheerfully evasive. "I will answer all of that after I'm done celebrating Dacoit and promoting it. I'm still just so selfish for audiences that I'm going everywhere and enjoying myself," he said.

For now, that seems more than fair. Dacoit is in theatres. The tickets are moving. And Adivi Sesh, the simple guy with the popcorn dream, is exactly where he wants to be.