Sunny Singh in his next grapples with premature balding and its side effects
Akash Bhatnagar (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 14, 2019)
Sunny Singh, who rose to fame as one of the central characters in the romcom Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, alongside Kartik Aaryan and Nushrat Bharucha, is back on the silver screen with his next, Ujda Chaman. The film shows him grappling with premature balding.
On Be Bald And Be Free Day today, a movement that celebrates baldness in India, the actor revisits the process of getting into the character of a man with a fast-receding hairline. “It took almost three hours every day to get into the look. I had to be the first one on set at 4 am, while others would join in around 7 am. There was no room for error as even the smallest mistake would mean doing it over. After the shoot, it took half an hour to remove the prosthetics,” the actor recalls, adding that during the Delhi schedule, a man approached him to say that he could relate to the actor’s character whenever faced with romantic failures. Then, there were times he invited weird looks when he ventured out in character.
Sunny goes on to add that he has a friend in the Navy who is also dealing with a receding hairline. “But, with the help of medical treatments, he takes care of himself. Moreover, baldness is fashionable now,” he points out, adding that in real life, he takes hair-care seriously. “But if I ever suffer from hair loss, I won’t be scared as I can undergo hair transplant, like many actors have. If that doesn’t work, I think I can carry off the bald look.”
Ask him for a favourite bald character and he picks Akshay Kumar’s Bala in Housefull 4 and Aamir Khan’s protagonist in the 2008 action-thriller, Ghajini, for their “macho look and standout personalities.”
Akshay in Housefull 4 and Ayushmann Khurrana in Bala also don bald avatars. Is he worried about being pitted against them? “I feel really lucky. I am a huge fan of Akshay sir. I have hundreds of his videos in my phone and whenever I meet him, it becomes the best day of my life. Ayushmann and he connect well with the audience but are grounded. Being compared to them feels good,” he asserts.
The release of Bala, which has a story similar to Ujda Chaman, was shifted a day prior to the latter’s. The director-producer, Abhishek Pathak, even decided to take legal action against the makers of Bala. “It is the producer’s call, I have nothing to do with it. Both teams have worked hard on their films, and people shouldn’t compare the two,” Sunny notes. Lastly, he doesn’t think his film’s box office performance will suffer. “The audience has seen both ours work. I don’t think anything bad will happen due to this clash.”
Baldness is fashionable now-Sunny Singh
