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<h1 class="centre">Abhay Deol is at odds with himself, a man playing both sides: shy and arrogant, humble and self-important, endearing and aloof, vain and profound. He’s incredibly likable (that dimple goes a long way), but there’s an edge to him (which has admittedly blunted over the years), a chip on his shoulder that sits alongside the heart on his sleeve. He may be just the sort of nepo baby we need — a celebrity in a complicated relationship with fame, one who uses his privilege to change how things are done and which stories are told. Listening to him is like watching a tennis match between him and…him, back and forth, back and forth, an endless volley of reason and instinct, wisdom and impulse. In the end, who wins? He does.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">AS: Where have you been, Abhay?</h1>

<h1 class="left">AD: I don't think I've gone anywhere. I don't live long stretches in Bombay; when I need to be here, I come. I built a house in Goa, so I try and spend as much time there as I can. Over the last nine years, I've also been spending a lot of time in LA, which is good because I am anonymous there.</h1>

<h1 class="left">AS: It sounds like you’ve been hiding.</h1>

<h1 class="left">AD: I wouldn't like to think so. But I suppose we kind of act out our subconscious. The desire to disappear is very much there for me. It's always been there. And I know why.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">AS: Because you grew up a Deol?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AD: The fame was at a different level. I mean, I was a kid in the ’80s. Before the advent of technology and travel and knowledge and access to a whole world of entertainment. And so the kind of celebrity worship at the time, I saw that with my uncle [Dharmendra]. And then when bhaiyya [Sunny Deol] was launched in the early ’80s, I saw the crazy fame around him.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AS: That can’t have been easy when you were a kid.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AD: Yeah, I never liked going to school and being asked personal questions about the family, people were always talking. Some teachers would be extremely nice to me just because of my last name, others would be particularly bad with me because of it. Just depended on the individual and what they thought of celebrity.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">AS:  In one of your recent Instagram posts you spoke about being an underconfident, underachieving, bullied child whom no one had any expectations of. That's quite a raw, vulnerable thing to put out there.</h1>

<h1 class="left">AD: Yeah I always keep my Instagram happy and fluffy, there's enough suffering in the world for me to express my own. But I thought once in a while it's good to remind people that it’s okay if you've gone through this experience, you're not alone. When you see someone in my position whom you perceive as successful and happy, to then hear them say ‘hey actually I'm just as human as you’ is a reminder that you can overcome it too. But only once in a while — I don’t want to be that person who's vulnerable because it feeds my ego.</h1>

<h1 class="left">AS: It's hard to imagine you underconfident, you've always seemed so self-possessed.</h1>

<h1 class="left">AD: You know a lot of people now talk about working on their traumas in therapy, understanding what brought them to this point, but so much of our trauma is also passed down to us by our parents.</h1>

<h1 class="left">AS: Oh absolutely, generational trauma is real.</h1>

<h1 class="left">AD: Exactly. I think a lot of it was generational trauma so I had to reflect upon my parents’ lives to sort of see why I was traumatised. It's not like I had some significantly abused life, no, but we all have our baggage.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">AS: Why did you become an actor?</h1>

<h1 class="right">AD: I always liked acting, but didn't want to do it because I was in a family of actors. And because I didn't like the attention that fame brought. So I think when I entered the industry, there was always that fear of attention because I just wanted to act and do my work quietly. I also came from that old-school notion of mystery being attractive about a celebrity as opposed to being available and accessible all the time.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">AS: You have this push-pull relationship with fame. At 47, have you made your peace?</h1>

<h1 class="right">AD: It wasn't that I wanted to be arrogant, I just didn't know how to deal with the attention. It took me a while to figure that one out. I'm enjoying celebrity status a lot more now, and accepting that I am famous. People love me. It's a unique life to be a celebrity. The problems are unique but so are the perks. It balances out.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">AS: People do feel drawn to you in this really sweet way. There is great fondness for you.</h1>

<h1 class="right">AD: Thank you for saying that. It's true and it humbles me every time. I'm very bad at receiving compliments so I get really shy.</h1>

<h1 class="right">AS: Where do you think that adoration comes from?</h1>

<h1 class="right">AD: I think maybe it’s because I'm not going out there and trying to draw attention to myself. People always sense the ones who are just trying with some dignity to do what they do. Fame is the result of my actions, it is not the reason for my actions. I think people see that. And I'm not saying that to big myself up or anything. I do this because it is who I am, it wasn't to become a star. If anything, I was running away from being a star because I know the pitfalls of stardom. I didn't want to be a slave to the system. I wanted freedom. I wanted authenticity. I wanted a challenge. I think I fought the system and people saw that as well. I don't know. I don't like answering this question.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">AS: Have you held on to your idealism? </h1>

<h1 class="centre">AD: I've dropped the idealism, it has too much to do with ego. I think you do have to be idealistic growing up, though. They say that in order to change the system you have to become a part of it, but you have to first fight the system to understand what it is and who you are. Then when you get older, you really understand the world and you can mould yourself to it without compromising on your quote unquote ideals.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AS: Did you achieve what you wanted?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AD: Yes, small changes make a big difference. You can't expect a huge, major change immediately. That's the ego at work again. But the small changes you make around yourself will create a change in the world. And being an actor and a filmmaker I stand in such a strong position to make change because my work reaches hundreds of millions of people. The change might show 20 years later, but you're not doing it for yourself. You're doing it for future generations.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">AS: Are you still as politically incorrect as you once were?</h1>

<h1 class="left">AD: I can be politically incorrect but my question is to what end? What is my goal, my purpose? I always challenged the industry. Whether it was endorsement of racist products or the rights of musicians and producers, or changing the narrative of what kind of movies and characters we portray and why. I did a lot of that in the beginning of my career because I wanted to make space for someone like myself. And so I was politically incorrect then but I wasn't trying to be that way. I wanted to be as authentic as possible. People say I was a rebel, but it served me well. It brought me to where I am. It got me respect and I got to make the movies I wanted to make.</h1>

<h1 class="left">AS: And now you’re more diplomatic?</h1>

<h1 class="left">AD: You can't be the same person at 35 that you were at 25; or the same person at 45 that you were at 35, hopefully. We all fear change, but change is natural, change is necessary. You know the saying ‘no man is an island’? That really hit me because I realized that I wasn't building any bridges. If you want to lead, you cannot push people into a corner because then you isolate them and if you corner people, they'll corner you at some point. If you just take a strong stand and are not willing to negotiate, you'll always be remembered as that guy, but that would be the end of you. And this is the challenge to your ego — can you still hold on to these ideals but engage with the world? I am better off engaging even the enemy if I have to.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">AS: This is all sounding very mature.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AD: I still want to make movies that speak truthfully and open doors for new kinds of narrative. It's a quieter sort of rebellion. I may not have the glory, but I will have work that is true to who I am. I'm not an activist, I'm an actor. You have to choose which one you want to be, because you can't be both. I’ve learnt that.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AS: Is Bun Tikki going to be your comeback film?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AD: Bun Tikki is one of my favourite scripts ever, among the top three scripts I've ever read in my career; it could be number one, even. (I arrogantly say I'm one of the best in the world at judging a script — okay I'm among the top five for sure.) It is a nice blend of mainstream with alternative, which is how I would describe most of the films I’ve worked on. DevD, Oye Lucky, Socha Na Tha, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara — all of these I used to call middle-of-the-road films, now I say mainstream meets alternative. But this one packs a bigger punch. </h1>

<h1 class="centre">AS: It’s also a film by a non-binary, openly queer director, Faraz Arif Ansari, which is not something we see often in Bollywood. What was it like working with them?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">AD: Because of Faraz's identity it was very authentic, I felt that they were speaking from their life experience. Faraz is just a very emotional person, and this film gets very emotional too. I think there's a talent in them that is rare, this person is a fucking great storyteller. I don't know about execution and direction yet, but as we progressed I became more and more excited about it. There I was in these beautiful locations and then in walks Zeenat Aman and then in walks in Shabana Azmi and you're like yeah wow okay this is special. And then someone like Manish Malhotra backing it — it’s perfect, it could not be any better. </h1>

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<h1 class="right">AS: How do you perceive sexuality?</h1>

<h1 class="right">AD: As a spectrum. I refuse the Western way of identifying sexuality because it's so black and white. The Eastern approach is so different, it recognises the whole of us. </h1>
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"I don't define my sexuality, and this might sound controversial but for me it's not something that I think can be defined."
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<h1 class="right">AS: What do you mean?</h1>

<h1 class="right">AD: I think it's more for the other person's comfort, so that they can put you in a box, neatly slot you. Why should I define myself in Western terms? I have embraced all experiences in my life and I continue to do so. I don't know how to label that, I don’t want to label that. All of us have a masculine and feminine within us, so in my opinion we are all they/them.</h1>

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<h1 class="full">AS: And how do you see masculinity?</h1>

<h1 class="full">AD: I think masculinity for me is the ability to make people feel safe and included. As a man I do feel like a protector and provider, maybe that's individual or it’s conditioning but there is a sense of taking charge and leading. Having said that I would happily give it up to a woman too if she wanted to take charge and lead, that's also part of my masculinity.</h1>

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<h1 class="full">AS: Not very toxic of you.</h1>

<h1 class="full">AD: It's very easy to be provocative through violence and sex, it's much harder to be provocative through silence. How the fuck do I provoke you by not saying anything? That’s what interests me.</h1>

<h1 class="full">AS: Do you get much hate online?</h1>

<h1 class="full">AD: No I don't, but that's also because I've kept myself in the background. If I really take the spotlight I would get more. Like I said I saw it as a kid, I saw what stardom can bring, the love and the hate. So I've tried to protect myself from that. But yeah I don't really get much hate and hope I continue not to, but who knows, this is India. This is India.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Credits:</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Editor-in-chief & Creative Director: Kshitij Kankaria </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Words by: Aishwarya Subramanyam </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Managing Editor: Anurag Sharma</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Art Director: Suprit Parulkar</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Stylist: Flora Huddart </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Makeup Artist: Sandhya Shekar </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Hair Artist: Daksh Nidhi </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Photo Assistant: Antonio Perrcicone </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Project Manager: Joel Piccinni </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Editorial Concepts and Fashion Team: Karishma Diwan & Ruhani Singh </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Creative Producer: Jay Modi </h1>
<h1 class="centre">Producer: Imraan Khatri Productions </h1>

<h1 class="centre">Beauty Partner: Tira</h1>

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