EXCLUSIVE: Tiger Shroff trained in kabaddi for two months with several injuries for SOTY 2: Punit Malhotra
While Student Of The Year concentrated more on swimming and sprinting, SOTY 2 will see Tiger Shroff engaging in a lot of action and sport sequences. For the latter, the action star trained rigorously for two months in kabaddi.
When Punit Malhotra was roped in to direct the second part in the Student of the Year franchise, he knew he had to make it look different from the original. For SOTY 2, the maker has upped the level of action and sports considerably. While the first instalment that featured Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra concentrated more on swimming and sprinting, along with the song and dance, the sequel will have kabaddi sequences.
Talking about choosing kabaddi over other sports, Punit says, "Kabaddi is a sport that belongs to our heartland and it's very rooted to our culture. No one has really seen it too much on screen and it's a very macho sport. Kabaddi is almost like a hand to hand combat between two teams, and it also gives you that adrenaline rush. You feel a sense of high and that's why we picked kabaddi."
Tiger Shroff has not only established himself as the potential action star, but he manages to do things that nobody else can even imagine. The director is all praises for the actor and also asserts that it's because Tiger's essentially a sports fanatic in real life, too. "I strongly believe that Tiger has the skill set that no one in the fraternity or anyone in this country has. Hence, it only made sense that we upped the level of sports in the film. Tiger is someone who can lend his qualities to it. That's exactly why we went for it and upped the ante on that," he adds.
Ask him about how the Baaghi actor aced his kabaddi skills and Punit reveals, "Tiger and the team worked really hard on learning kabaddi. We trained for two months and there were lots of injuries in the process. We also got guys from the Pro Kabaddi league. There's someone who's the biggest name in the world for kabaddi. He's the coach who actually trains everyone and orchestrates Pro-Kabaddi. He was there with us through the shoot and choreographed everything. We shot the whole kabaddi sequence even before we reached the sets, so once we were there, we knew exactly what we need to shoot. It is so tedious that each and every person, including Tiger landed up with injuries everyday. But they worked really really hard for it and I'm really happy with the results.