Riteish-Genelia’s Sons Riaan and Rahyl Make Acting Debut in “Raja Shivaji”; Get Trained by Amole Gupte (EXCLUSIVE)

To film buffs, Amole Gupte is known primarily as the writer of “Taare Zameen Par” (2007) and the villain in “Kaminey” (2009), “Singham Returns” (2014) and more. He is also the writer-director for three films made for and about children: “Stanley Ka Dabba” (2011), “Hawa Hawaai” (2014) and “Sniff” (2017).

For two decades now, Gupte has been popular among children: as their Froggie Uncle. It’s been a mission for Amole to spend time with children and share his knowledge of art, theatre and cinema with them, visiting schools as well as institutes to do so. But he believes in doing this in a fun, informal manner.
 

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And today, he is happy to have similarly worked with Riteish’s and Genelia Deshmukh’s sons, Riaan, 11, and his brother, Rahyl, 9. He trained the Deshmukh boys to face the camera for the first time in the Marathi-Hindi magnum opus, “Raja Shivaji”, directed by their father, who is also playing the title role.

“Riteish and Genelia are family friends and they were also in the forefront to promote my film, “Stanley Ka Dabba,” Gupte told Variety India. “It was sheer pleasure spending time with their two kamaalichi (incredible) boys. At their age, can you imagine, they can recite the “Ganpati Stotra” and so many aartis by heart! In “Raja Shivaji”, they play Shivaji Maharaj at different ages, Rahyl being the younger one seen in the trailer, while Riaan plays a slightly older Shiva!” 

Gupte doesn’t like the words ‘train’ or ‘groom’ when it comes to teaching children to act,  “Those are wrong words!” laughs the actor-filmmaker. “I just had fun interacting with both of them, and  now they have become my fast friends! We would just play around with their Marathi lines, as the portion of their script was given to me, and I gave them tips on how to speak them! They were quick on the uptake and I started looking forward to meeting them each Saturday. It was not at all like a teacher-and-student equation, but a bond with Froggie Uncle over samosas and jalebi, which they always wanted from me!”

Gupte reveals that the two kids’ basic skills automatically came to the fore in these fun interactions and terms them as “heere” (diamonds).” “The technical side like camera angles and markings must all have been handled later by Riteish,” he says.

On one such Saturday, when he was with the kids conducting a workshop, Deshmukh asked Gupte if he was “up to playing the role” of Adil Shah, the seventh Sultan of Bijapur, in the film. “I took it up as I cannot refuse Riteish and Genelia, plus it was a fabulous role. But my friendship with the two prodigies — their sons —  will last as long as I live!”