Urdu lessons from Karachi for Irrfan Khan

Irrfan, who is known to be a perfectionist, pushes himself to great lengths to get things right when portraying a role. Recently, he surprised the makers of his next, D-Day, when he insisted on working on his dialect and accents...

Irrfan, who is known to be a perfectionist, pushes himself to great lengths to get things right when portraying a role. Recently, he surprised the makers of his next, D-Day, when he insisted on working on his dialect and accents with tutors from Karachi, before shooting for the film. The actor is apparently playing an ISI agent. He wanted to perfect his Urdu, since he didn’t want his character to be unconvincing, which he felt would have been an embarrassment.

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“Irrfan’s dialogues from D-Day were sent to a popular radio jockey in Karachi who recorded them in their local accent and sent them back to Irrfan,” reveals an insider. However, since the training wasn’t enough, a week prior to the shoot, two locals were flown down from Karachi to help Irrfan perfect his accent and diction. “They trained with him for hours. They also tried to understand the accent and the diction by looking at a couple of other references taken from various sources,” says the source.

Director Nikhil Advani confirms the development saying, “Irrfan’s attempt for perfection is infectious. To try and achieve the local Pakistani accent, our team researched and contacted a host of Pakistani locals to present a bunch of options to Irrfan. Considering his character has been living for 14 years in Pakistan, he has to sound like a local.”

He adds, “It’s such a pleasure to work with an actor who is willing to give his time and effort to bring his character to life.”