Abhishek Bachchan was over 100 kilos during Bob Biswas shoot, had to maintain it during lockdown: ‘Mentally I got stuck’

Abhishek Bachchan has been earning a lot of praise for his role in his upcoming film Bob Biswas. The actor is seen with chubby cheeks and a paunch in the film’s trailer. He has now opened up about gaining extra kilos and being stuck with it when the film’s shoot came to a halt due to lockdown.

Abhishek said that it was fun to gain weight while gorging on Bengali sweets but it was cumbersome to maintain that weight during the lockdown. 

He told India Today in an interview, “I mean to put on the weight obviously shooting in Kolkata in winter when you can have Gud Sandesh and all the wonderful sweet food that Kolkata has, but mentally I got stuck because we had to shut down our shoot halfway through because of the lockdown and we were about 80 per cent complete. And, we had another 10-15 days of work left. Throughout the lockdown, I had to maintain that weight. That was tough.”

 The actor tried using prosthetics at the behest director Diya Ghosh and her father Sujoy Ghosh but decided against it. He said, “I became between 100-105 kilos during the shoot. And if you see Bob’s face, the face changes when it is round and his cheeks fill up. When you do prosthetics on the cheeks it looks like a prosthetic. So, the stomach moves in a different way. When you have that weight and you are physically carrying that weight your entire performance changes because your body language changes your weight, your movement, your walk, your run, everything changes.”

Reacting to the film’s trailer, Abhishek’s father and actor Amitabh Bachchan had said on Twitter, “I am proud to say you are my Son!” Bob Biswas tells the story of the killer who featured originally in Vidya Balan-starrer Kahaani, essayed by Saswata Chatterjee in the film. 

Also read: Bob Biswas trailer: Abhishek Bachchan steps into Saswata Chatterjee’s shoes as the chonky, forgetful, killing machine

Written by Sujoy Ghosh and directed by his daughter Diya Annapurna Ghosh, Bob Biswas is produced by Gauri Khan, Sujoy Ghosh and Gaurav Verma. Bob Biswas is set to premiere on December 3, 2021, on ZEE5.