Arjun Rampal has spent more than two decades moving between leading-man opportunities and vivid supporting turns, from Om Shanti Om to the Dhurandhar films. In a new conversation around the ZEE5 thriller Blind Game, he makes clear that he is not asking for a comeback narrative.
The film belongs to everyone
Blind Game is a Hindi remake of the 2014 Malayalam thriller 7th Day, originally led by Prithviraj Sukumaran, with changes made for present-day viewers. Rampal said he was drawn by the film’s restraint: a simple story that unfolds over one night in Manali, without leaning on the artificial toolkit many modern thrillers reach for. The challenge, he argued, is keeping a suspense story “real and organic.”
He also refused the headliner framing. “I don’t like it when people say, ‘Oh, this is an Arjun Rampal film,'” he told The New Indian Express, naming director Sangeeth Sivan, producer Anuj Sharma and co-star Priyamani as equal stakeholders. The film’s newcomers, he added, carry much of the load.
A final collaboration
Blind Game is the last directorial work of Sangeeth Sivan, who died in 2024. Rampal called the late filmmaker “an amazing man” and said the two had long discussed working together. By the time the film was made, Sivan had already begun writing a sequel, a detail he delivers with evident affection: “I think this is one of the best films in his career.”
The director’s signature, he suggested, was a quirkiness and unusual sense of humour that filters even into a serious subject. Rampal confirmed that his own character carries a comedic edge, but kept the specifics under wraps.
Heroes, villains and the 3000-crore franchise
Rampal has often been cast as the brooding figure: the filmmaker in The Last Lear, the gangster in Daddy, Major Iqbal in Dhurandhar. He sees little point in splitting roles into hero and villain. Flawed people, he said, are more fun to play, and inhabiting damaged characters becomes its own form of therapy. He compared the residue of a role to his Rock On!! sequel, where the guitar brought Joe Mascarenhas back through muscle memory.
- Blind Game: ZEE5 thriller, adapted from 7th Day, set across a single night in Manali.
- Legacy: Sangeeth Sivan’s final film; a sequel was already in early writing.
- Dhurandhar: The two films reportedly grossed over 3000 crore combined.
- Next: Operation Ganga with Mohanlal, in English, Hindi and Russian.
On Dhurandhar, he was clear that no one expected the two-part thriller to become a 3000-crore grosser. The team knew it was special, but the scale arrived as a surprise. The memory he keeps is less about the number than the shared investment across departments.
What comes next
In Operation Ganga, Rampal shares the screen with Mohanlal in a multilingual story about the evacuation of Indians during the Ukraine war. He will deliver his lines in English, Hindi and Russian, and the film uses sync sound. Of Mohanlal, he said: “I have not met a more effortless and experienced actor than Mohanlal sir.” He also praised the Malayalam star’s fitness and willingness to perform his own stunts.
The thread through all the superstars he has worked with, Rampal suggested, is a childlike curiosity and an appetite to learn. His own relationship with fame is deliberately deflationary. “Every time I start behaving like a star, I get a big tight reality check from God,” he said. Staying in touch with real life, he believes, is an actor’s primary resource.
Source: The New Indian Express
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