New Delhi: When he got into movies it was all about “the body” with films such as “Jism” and “Dostana”, says John Abraham disarmingly. Two decades later, he seems to have found quite another world with his almost nerdy interest in geopolitical issues.
The actor-filmmaker spends hours making sure he’s up with the news. And not surprisingly, the filmography has undergone a dramatic change. So the list now includes films that marry commerce with stories about hot button issues and how they impact India, be it “Madras Cafe”, “Parmanu”, “The Diplomat” or his upcoming film “Tehran”.
“It’s important now to build a legacy around the kind of films I’m doing and to be known for them… Earlier, I didn’t understand what the audience felt about me because we’re insulated most of the time. But when I travel and meet people, they say, ‘Oh, John we love The Diplomat. Oh, we love Madras Cafe.’ That’s when you realise you’ve slowly started creating a story for yourself,” Abraham told PTI in an interview.
The conversation is peppered with talk about Donald Trump, tariffs, Palestine, Israel and Russia-Ukraine.
He wants his audiences to associate him with sensible cinema, the kind that inspired him to get into movies. He remembers the moment it happened — when he watched Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Holocaust drama “Schindler’s List”.
“I’m not lying, I was affected for days… And because that impacted me so much, I decided that when I become a producer, or when I get into films these are the kind of films I want to do,” he said.
When he did enter showbiz, however, it was all about “Jism”, he said, tongue firmly in cheek as he referred to his 2003 debut film, an erotic thriller.
“It was all about the body (then). And I didn’t shy away from it. There’s a huge audience that appreciates that. And I love it. But it was also very important for me to make a point. So ‘Kabul Express’, ‘New York’, ‘Madras Cafe’ and ‘The Diplomat’, these relevant films started coming in. But once I became a producer, I’ve gone full out.”
Abraham’s production house JA Entertainment began with “Vicky Donor” in 2012 for which it got the National Award. Then came “Madras Cafe”, “Batla House” and “Attack” and several others, many of which he acted in too.
Through his films, he wants his audience to explore “how India’s involved with the rest of the world”. And that comes from his childhood where his father made him read editorials of newspapers every morning.
“Even today, I go to my office at 7 in the morning on a non-shooting day and for the first two hours, I only catch up with what’s going on in the world. If you ask me about ‘Tehran’ and you say, why did you do this film, I can speak to you about the Iran-Israel conflict.
“I can speak to you about everything under the sun, not because it’s an exam for me but because I love this space.”
His father is a Syrian Christian from Kerala and mother is Irani-Zoroastrian.
Abraham said it is important to keep abreast of geopolitics because everything is connected.
“People say, ‘what do we have to do with it? We only have to do with Pakistan’. That’s not true. You need to understand what is happening in the geopolitics of the world to understand what is happening with India.”
“Tehran”, a Maddock Films production that will start streaming on ZEE5 from August 14, is a fictionalised account of a true event that unfolds against the simmering global tension between Israel and Iran. It draws inspiration from the 2012 bomb explosion near the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi.
Directed by Arun Gopalan, the film features Abraham as ACP Rajeev Kumar, who is pulled into a covert operation that spans continents, ideologies, and fractured alliances.
The actor said while the Iran-Israel conflict makes his film topical, it also made its big screen release impossible, which is why he and producer Dinesh Vijan took “an informed decision” to release the film on ZEE5.
Abraham said the Ministry of External Affairs saw the film and was “very kind and unbiased” and asked him to go ahead with the release of the movie.
He calls “Tehran”, for which he learned Persian and Hebrew, the first international film from India.
“You will see that a lot of Farsi is spoken in the film. My mother is Iranian. I learned the language for six months. There is a lot of Hebrew in it so I also learned that,” he said, giving the example of Ben Affleck’s movie “Argo”.
“Like that movie, when I enter Tehran, I won’t speak in Hindi. That’ll look stupid… Farsi is not an easy language to learn. But it’s a beautiful language. It sounds so musical and beautiful.”
The actor said the team worked with Iranian and Israeli actors to lend authenticity and one of the most beautiful moments saw them all sitting down for dinner and talking about life.
“It happened to me once before when I did ‘Kabul Express’ and I had the Afghani, the Pakistani and Indians all sitting together and enjoying a meal.”
How did he manage to break out of his early eye-candy image?
“You can’t break your image by doing 40 interviews and saying that I want to break that image. My work speaks for what I’m doing. When people talk to you, you understand what you’re about from the way they speak with you.”
All of this does not mean he will stop doing the fun movies like “Pathaan” and “Force 3”, Abraham hastens to add.
“The day I announce ‘Force 3’, I know I’ll have ‘The Force’ body… I hope that my commercial cinema, the hardcore commercial cinema I do, also makes a lot of sense.”
There is a lot of talk about film universes these days. Is that something that interests him?
“No, because I am the centre of the universe,” he said with a laugh and quickly explained, “If I believe that I’m the epicentre of whatever I’m doing, then I can create a conversation around me. I don’t want to be the ripples, I want to be the epicentre.”
