When I first approached Irrfan for Qarib Qarib Singlle, a kind of oddball, quirky romcom, he asked for a synopsis and then sent me a text of three words: “Interesting. Let’s meet”. After this, he took roughly a year to say yes for the role of the funny and cute shaayar, Yogi. He struggled to connect with the character, he said to me, because his own personality was so different from Yogi’s. And then one night, probably at some very late hour, it hit him. He loved Yogi’s unhesitant empathy with working-class people — drivers, cooks, hotel doormen, waiters, street-side vendors. Irrfan identified with this, looked up to it. Here was a protagonist, weird as hell, not at all in keeping with most people’s idea of a romantic hero, but he had a big heart. This abiding and yet unselfconscious affection for all life that crackled and buzzed around him, is what Irrfan would try and bring to his performance. As the co-writer of the script, I felt he had stepped into that secret chamber of the story’s fragile, beating heart, and I knew that my first choice of actor had been the correct one.
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