Tahir Raj Bhasin competes with national level runners in Chhichhore!

August 29, 2019 - 9:01 AM IST

Tahir Raj Bhasin has always been regarded as an actor to watch out for. He wowed everyone with his brilliant debut as a villain in the super hit and highly acclaimed Mardaani. In his next, Dangal director Nitesh Tiwari’s coming of age film Chhichhore, he will be seen essaying the role of a sports champion in an engineering college. In one particular scene in which he will be seen participating in an adrenaline-pumping relay race, Tahir actually competed with national level runners!

Tahir Raj Bhasin competes with national level runners in Chhichhore!

“Chhichhore is the toughest film that I have done. To play the role of a sports champion, I first needed to break my body and become supremely fit to convincingly look like a college athlete. Along with acing sporting disciplines, I also had to balance the emotional graph and light-heartedness of a college drama while competing in varying sport! Combining the two drained a lot out of me,” Tahir says.

“It took four months of gruelling training in 4 different kinds of sports - athletics, football, kabaddi, and volleyball to become confident of playing, Derek, my character. I used to train for about 4-5 hours daily with national coaches and I remember being so exhausted and my body being in serious pain after each training session. But it was all worth it because I’m really proud of what I have done on screen and Nitesh Tiwari’s validation at the end of our shoot meant everything to me,” he adds.

About the scene in which he competes with national-level runners, Tahir says, “the running shot in the trailer was the biggest challenge to shoot. It was a scene where I was not told that I was running with the best in the country until after the shot was over! I gave it all and I remember how in Mumbai’s most humid months shooting Chhichhore’s sports scenes was tough because of the serious athletic skill I was up against. I’m just proud and happy that, in the moment as Derek, I could compete with them and do a great job for my director under pressure.”

Tahir Raj Bhasin plays the role of Derek in Chhichhore. Derek was Nitesh’s real-life senior from engineering college. The real Derek was an extremely close friend of Nitesh and was a driven and passionate sportsman who excelled in whichever sporting discipline he competed. The film is set for September 6 release.