Lakshya has his eyes on the target

Lakshya Lalwani rarely smiles. Throughout a five-hour shoot and several look changes on a hot afternoon in a Bandra studio, I can count on my fingers the number of times I see the actor crack a slight, nearly unnoticeable grin. The first time is when his makeup artist, Mahima Wachher, murmurs something funny as she touches up his face. The second time, when someone asks him if he’d like to change the song (which he’s eager to). Moments later, the 29-year-old is silently mouthing the words to BK and Jay Trak’s ‘Icy’—one of the many tunes in his Punjabi playlist—as the photographer adjusts the lighting.

Otherwise, Lakshya—who prefers going by his mononym—remains solemn, almost stern. Left alone, he sits brooding, but he’s unusually sincere when there are people around. He is ready to smolder at the camera whenever it points at him and hardly says a word except to check what everyone on set thinks of a certain pose. During a shot where he is seated on a couch, I notice his leg bounce in the moments when the camera is off him and promptly realise something: what can be misinterpreted as arrogance is really a nervous sort of focus.

In his work too, Lakshya comes across as persistent and keen to overdeliver, somewhat stubborn in his pursuit of perfection. It is why he asks the photographer to tell him what’s working and what’s not. It is why he carefully looks at every photograph after a shot is completed and nods in agreement whenever someone points out that his posture is slightly off or his face should be turned this way or that. He’s clearly a director’s actor, immediately willing to act on what others suggest—be it lifting his arms up in a more whimsical, dance-like pose or tossing his jacket back in sync with the camera flash.

In his seriousness, the actor is nearly indistinguishable from his character in the Netflix series The Ba***ds of Bollywood. In Aryan Khan’s directorial debut, Lakshya plays Aasmaan Singh—a self-assured, rough-around-the-edges (and very impulsive) outsider from Delhi who has just broken into the film industry. Like Aasmaan after the runaway success of his campy action superhit, Revolver, Lakshya had people’s attention after his debut, Kill (2023), a slick action thriller where he plays a commando on a violent rampage in a moving train after the murder of his lover. With the success of Ba***ds, he’s finally becoming a mononym to remember.

At the time of writing this, his Instagram followers have shot up to 1.3 million. On social media, users are scrambling to predict his next move: Was that him spotted outside Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s office? Should he be cast in a role opposite Saiyaara’s Aneet Padda, another outsider who has quickly gained sweetheart status? Is he becoming Dharma’s lucky charm?

In Ba***ds, he’s a quick-fuse actor, always up for a bar brawl that plays his sculpted arms to their best advantage. But the man who shakes my hand and greets me quietly after the shoot is a softer version of the Aasmaan Singh I had come to know on screen. “I was shooting for Kill at the time that casting director Nandini Shrikent’s team reached out to me. They said there’s a show loosely based on this guy who has come from Delhi and the journey only begins at the point where he has already become a big star,” recalls Lakshya.

His audition, in fact, was a pivotal scene in Ba***ds: the roundtable conference where Aasmaan blatantly calls out Karishma Talvar for being a nepo baby born with a silver spoon in her mouth. “I immediately felt a connection with the material because there was a part of me that used to feel like this and think like this,” Lakshya reveals, “But because I’ve been in Mumbai for the last 10 years, you have to be a certain way, sound a certain way, be humble. So, you start layering yourself. And I felt that Aasmaan was the raw Lakshya that came to this city 10 years ago. If I cracked this part, I’d be able to once again live that life I had left behind.”

He’s so earnest, you feel good that Bollywood hasn’t tarnished or tainted him yet. This quality, I realise, is exactly what separates him from most. Being nonchalant is not for Lakshya; he is unafraid to admit how much he wants something and how much he would do to prove himself perfect for a part he’s set his heart on. Just like Aasmaan Singh, his onscreen doppelgänger from Delhi.

“The similarities are endless. His unabashedness, his political incorrectness... whatever you call it. Some of that is still in me but has reduced to a degree because of how I’m supposed to behave,” the actor confesses, “Like Aasmaan, I’m also very close to my family. He follows his heart, and so do I.” When I quip that I hope he doesn’t go around beating people up like Khan’s protagonist, I am rewarded with the third smile of the day. “Of course, that’s something. Big difference,” he laughs, “I try to hold back and remind myself there are better ways of dealing with things than just punching down.”

There’s more. After his television debut in 2015 in a series called Warrior High, Lakshya went largely unnoticed. In 2019, he signed a three-film deal with Karan Johar for Dharma Productions (thankfully, much more successful than his character’s three-film contract with Ba***ds villain Freddy Sodawala). It was after two shelved projects that Lakshya finally made his big-screen debut with Kill; both the film and his performance garnered rave reviews, and it’s now slated for a Hollywood remake.

Needless to say, he knows what a slow-burn arc feels like. “The harder the work, the sweeter the fruit” seems to be his motto—and that has culminated in The Ba***ds of Bollywood. “A lot of things have changed for me for good. I now feel more validated as an artist. I feel rewarded for all the work I’ve done and the sacrifices I’ve made,” he muses, “We were committed to this project for over two years and, given a choice, I’d want to do it all over again.”

This week, while Bollywood Diwali parties are taking over our timelines, Lakshya is spending time on set in Pune, away from his family in Delhi. It’s taken a long time to arrive at such a packed schedule, and he’s not ready to let it go.

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When he signed up for The Ba***ds of Bollywood, Lakshya admits he was expecting something completely different from what it ended up being—like us, he had not seen the plot twist coming. “I was under the impression that we were going to make a very serious show about an actor’s life. And then cut to the table read. We were all falling to the floor laughing…until I read the scene of the speech when I win the award. And Aryan told me I would be doing a scene with Shah Rukh Sir,” he whispers, still sounding disbelieving. “I just looked up and thanked God for it.”

Among the parallels with his onscreen character, this one is so serendipitous, it almost feels planned. Earlier this week, Lakshya won his first Filmfare for Best Male Debut and, just like Aasmaan when he won his ‘Filmfirst’, he gave his acceptance speech standing next to Shah Rukh Khan.

Lakshya says that the day Shah Rukh Khan was on set was unremarkable. “He doesn’t make you feel that he’s the Shah Rukh Khan,” he says, “Of course you’re nervous and intimidated by his presence, but he talks to you like a friend. The lines we had in that scene were also different, but he changed them at the last minute. He said, ‘Say this, it’ll sound better.’ It didn’t feel like I was working with the biggest star in the world. It was like working with any other co-actor.”

His son Aryan, too, is a perfectionist, Lakshya reveals. “Aryan has this habit of enacting every character because he needs perfection. Even if it was Karishma’s part, he’d act it out to show you, and sometimes we’d be in splits. It was really endearing to see the passion he had.”

Creating good art is often likened to torture; both accomplished and amateur actors frequently brag about their complicated methods, which include isolating themselves, ignoring everyone on set, and changing their diets, hobbies, personalities and more to feel connected to their role. The Ba***ds of Bollywood disproves the myth that if you’re not pushing yourself to your limit, you’re not making good art.

“There were no tough scenes to shoot because the ambience and camaraderie was such amongst the cast and the crew that it didn’t feel like we were going to work. It felt like we were having a party,” Lakshya shares. “Of course, action sequences are always hard to shoot, because they’re physically draining and you also have to look good. Your mouth can’t remain open while you’re punching somebody. Maybe that was the most difficult part.” He cracks another smile: number four, I count.

He’s not just basking in the series’ success, though. Currently, Lakshya is filming between Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad for Dharma Productions’ romantic drama Chand Mera Dil opposite Ananya Panday. Even as the internet is abuzz with excitement for the project, he is tight-lipped. He’s just as secretive about the real-life drama that The Ba***ds of Bollywood satirises. “Like any other industry, our industry is made of the same human beings. We’ve tried to create a meta world. It’s exaggerated, loud, and raunchy. Of course Karan Johar doesn’t go around threatening people. We have just made you believe what you think is happening in the industry,” he stresses.

As perhaps the biggest non-nepotistic lead in the industry this year, his thoughts on nepotism are also more benign than Aasmaan’s. “I can’t say anything new about it,” he shrugs, “It exists everywhere around the globe. Just deal with it.” Not once does he mention a silver spoon. “Focus on your craft, focus on your work,” he says, “If you’re supposed to make it, you will. Otherwise, you’ll always have excuses to give yourself.” The advice is right on brand from what I’ve seen of Lakshya in the last few hours and what I predict I will see of him in the years to follow. The harder the work, the sweeter the fruit.

Editorial Direction: Megha Mahindru, Ridhima Sapre. Photography: Sarang Gupta. Stylist: Vrinda Narang. Art and Creative Direction: Harry Iyer. Bookings editor: Nikita Moses. Multimedia designer: Mehak Jindal. Visuals Editor: Ria Rawat. Hair: Nadim. Makeup: Mahima Wachher Salvi. Assistants: Keyur Sangoi, Ayushi Kumar. Production: Imran Khatri Productions. Artist PR Management: Hype