Varun Sharma: While Garfield loves lasagne, I love my chole bhature
Varun Sharma on being the Hindi voice of Garfield in The Garfield Movie, attending Pulkit Samrat-Kriti Kharbanda's wedding and Richa Chadha-Ali Fazal's baby
Actor Varun Sharma is voicing the beloved cartoon character Garfield in Hindi for the upcoming The Garfield Movie and insists that being a part of it has been nostalgic. “Every day before going to school, I would take an update of what has happened in Garfield’s life. From black and white to colour to live animation, I have witnessed its evolution,” he says.
Ask Sharma if he finds any similarities between him and Garfield and he says, “He speaks from his heart, no holds barred, and that’s what even I do. Both of us love food too. The only difference is that he loves his pizza and lasagne, but I am a very Indian guy and I love my chole bhature and kulcha naan. Also, I love sleeping and I can sleep a lot, but unlike him, I like Mondays.”
It’s been seven months since Sharma’s last screen outing, Fukrey 3 (2023), and the buddy comedy belonged to a genre that the actor has become infamous for. “It will always be there as friendship is one of the strongest emotions of life,” says the actor who has done buddy comedies like Fukrey series, Cirkus (2022), Roohi (2021). Ask him if he feels restricted to the genre and he says, “I have been told many times that I only do comedy and I am getting typecast, but I feel that comedy is the genre I never thought I’d be able to pull off. When I did theatre, I used to do hardcore intense dramas like Ashwatthama. So, comedy has always been the toughest genre for me.”
He adds that Fukrey (2013) changed everything for him. “It was only with my outing with Fukrey that I realised I had a knack for comedy. When I heard people laughing in the cinemas, it was a great emotion to feel that you can make someone laugh. I enjoy doing buddy films but at the same time, there has been constant efforts to do something different as well. However, comedy is a genre that I will never leave.
Speaking of Fukrey, Sharma’s co-star Pulkit Samrat recently got married to actor Kriti Kharbanda, whereas his friends and actor-couple Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal are about to become parents. Seeing them take these big steps in personal life, does it influence him to do the same as well? “That’s surely there with my mother. She tells me ‘dekho tumhare saath wale kya kar rahe hain, aur tum kya?’ But I believe something that is supposed to happen for you, will happen in its own time, and the same thing is with marriage. It will happen organically,” he responds.
Recalling Samrat and Kharbanda’s marriage, Sharma shares, “It was very emotional, and I have cried when the varmala happened. We all kind of started off together. We saw how they met, how they fell in love and how their relationship progressed. To see them take this big step of getting married was something so beautiful to witness. Kriti was always a part of the Fukrey gang, now it’s just official.” Ask him whether he will become a chacha or a mama to Fazal and Chadha’s kid and he quips, “I will become a ChaMa.”