If you’ve watched the official trailer of Vijay Ratnakar Gutte’s political biographical drama “The Accidental Prime Minister”, you’re now probably in complete awe of Anupam Kher and Akshaye Khanna’s accurate portrayal of the former Prime Minister of India and Sanjaya Baru respectively. Kher has posted a sweet welcome note to his co-actor Khanna on his Instagram page, thanking him for his contribution to the movie.
Akshaye Khanna will be playing the role of Sanjaya Baru, who was a policy analyst and the media advisor of the erstwhile Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh. The inspiration behind the movie is a memoir of the same written by Baru himself that is an account of his time in the Prime Minister’s Office. Khanna manages to strike a stark presence with his first dialogue in the trailer, where he compares Dr. Singh to Bhishma, an important character present in the epic tale of the Mahabharat.
According to the epic, Bhishma was a man of complete ethics and ideals and taken the vows of celibacy – in spite of that, Dr. Singh turned out to be a victim of family drama on the basis of sheer politics. Khanna looks every bit the man of words when he says that he ‘is the writer of the stories of those who will write the story of the country’. Though the trailer does have a political background, it simply shows us the truth with no intention of abusing any particular political party.
It can be said that Khanna is risen up to his much-deserved ‘star’ status with his use of expressions and tonal change as he swears his loyalty to the Prime Minister in a particular scene. As the trailer takes us through different events in the Indian politics from 2004 to 2014, we see Khanna becoming more and more of an important character as he cements his place as the third-person narrator in the movie. According to an interview, Khanna has mentioned that the director had decided to make his character much more creative as the same could not be done for the other characters in the book.
“The Accidental Prime Minister” comprises an ensemble cast of Anupam Kher, Akshaye Khanna, Suzanne Bernert, Ahana Kumra and Arjun Mathur playing major political characters. The movie will be released on 11 January 2019.
