Equally prolific in theatre, films, and web series, Jim Sarbh is gearing up for the release of his new show Rocket Boys. The 34-year-old actor will be seen as India’s celebrated nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha in the show that revolves around his and fellow scientist Vikram Sarabhai’s travails and times. Helmed by first-time director Abhay Pannu, Rocket Boys is set to release on SonyLIV on February 4.
In this free-wheeling conversation, Sarbh talks about how he approached playing a national figure as admired as Bhabha, his experience of working with Pannu and Ishwak Singh, who plays Sarabhai, the second season, and more.
What was the most interesting aspect of playing a man as iconic as Homi Bhabha on screen?
If you’re trying to play a genius, you have to think about the fact that they approach every situation differently. Not just the important parts, they approach even day-to-day things differently because their brain is wired in a slightly different way. How do we represent that? How do we even try to touch that?
We had to rework, tweak, and fiddle with things a lot to make the scenes also representative of the person who thinks in a different way. They don’t let the small stuff bother them. They are in equal measure charismatic and irreverent, sophisticated, and gentleman-like. They are not all of those things all the time. But they are all of those things.
Despite doing such incredible work with minuscule resources and transforming the face of technological processes in India, Homi Bhabha also had to go through years of hard work, setbacks, not being able to figure it out, and toiling endlessly. That’s the brilliant part—that despite all these setbacks, he prevailed.
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It was looking at him for the human being that he was—a real person who had challenges ranging from petty to humongous. He was a man with a huge appetite for being interested in things. And that ranged from art to music, culture, and science.
He was a phenomenal painter, a very accomplished violinist. He designed the buildings that he worked in. Even within the fields of science, he was interested in physics, molecular biology, astronomy. He was a renaissance man. He applied his eye to detail and his striving for perfection to everything that he got interested in.
How was it working with Ishwak Singh, who plays Vikram Sarabhai?
I probably had the most scenes with him. It came with everything that happens if you shoot for over a year. There are moments when you’re just crackling and it’s working really well. Then there are other moments when it’s a bit spikey and you’re bouncing off each other. But that’s what was required for the script. It was great.
It was wonderful, very interesting. The show is all about the conflict between our characters. They stand for two very different kinds of ideologies. Ishwak has played Sarabhai in this idealistic, simple, driven way. Homi, meanwhile, was slightly more mercurial, more strong-headed. He was also older. He was Vikram Sarabhai’s mentor. They become friends and bring out something brilliant in each other.
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This is Abhay Pannu’s directorial debut. How was the experience of working with him?
He is lovely and so collaborative. He knows what he wants and yet is also improvisational. He captures the feeling of what he wants and understands that what he thought of doesn’t need to be the only way. He and his team had done so much research, he was a good resource to ask any questions that I had about historical facts or science.
The prep was immense. We’ve poured a lot of hard work and love into this character and the series. I drove Abhay insane asking all sorts of questions, rereading the scenes, improvising, trying to capture an unapologetic confident man who is also vulnerable. I must have shot about 70 days last year for this part but it feels like the whole year, it was just Rocket Boys, Rocket Boys, Rocket Boys.
Was there a sense of responsibility playing a national hero as revered as Homi Bhabha?
As an actor, you should not be thinking about responsibility. The directors, creators, writers, and producers, all of them should be thinking about it. If you as an actor start to feel it, then you stop thinking about the actual human being who has done those things. We like to whitewash history and label people and periods as good or bad. We love it. I think that’s extremely silly.
If you take those approaches as an actor, you don’t take into account that they were humans who did great or bad things. Their whole totality is not bad or great. They are humans trying to solve problems. It is up to the audience and history to decide whether they are great or not. In the moment, you are just trying to do things, you don’t think about the legacy of your actions. So I thought of it more in terms of where the character’s interest lay than in terms of him wanting to be great.
In the last decade, you’ve acted prolifically across various platforms—theatre, film, and web shows. Which one do you enjoy working with the most?
I like all of them. They all require a similar skill set, but the timelines of work and enjoyment are different. Since a series goes on for much longer than a film, you work for a lot longer and the enjoyment, therefore, is over a prolonged period of time. With a play, you work really hard for a month or so and get live feedback from the audience. So you know then and there if it’s good or bad or if you need to work harder or change things. You know what’s working or not. You don’t get that in a film or a series. In a series, when you’re 10 months into the same project, you begin to have questions like—is this working? Am I doing good? I don’t know.
Is a second season on the cards?
Hell yeah, it is. It’s 100 percent on.
(Edited by : Yashi Gupta)
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