Varun Dhawan Credits Samantha for His Action Era in ‘Citadel’ – Talks About Honey Bunny and Baby John

Varun Dhawan Credits Samantha for His Action Era in ‘Citadel’: Nine years ago, Varun Dhawan revealed his angst for his character in Sriram Raghavan's revenge drama Badlapur. Though he was cast none as forcefully as he's been in action, though until this year.

Here's to action era 2024 which ushers the action career of Varun Dhawan as two action projects go on floor consecutively – period spy thriller series Citadel: Honey Bunny helmed by Raj & DK and action thriller Baby John, an Atlee associate film conceptualised by him.

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He had discussed it all with Raj & DK the minute he rang them up, congratulating them in early 2021 over his The Family Man season 2. Tossed back by the action, which he had no reference to but liken it to the high-octane video game action, he saw the formidable antagonist from Samantha Ruth Prabhu as the Honey to his Bunny. Ironically, it is also Samantha to whom Varun owes this much-awaited action era.

“What I do feel is that both Citadel: Honey Bunny and Baby John are Samantha's conviction for me. We'd spoken about something and it's happened. I have to thank Samantha for that, 100%. She gave me a lot of confidence that I'm on the right track. It matters a lot,” says Varun.

Samantha accepts the credit and tells us, “It's my manifestation for Varun. I feel like this will be Varun's year.” Varun points out that he's not the only actor to straddle the diverse action worlds of Raj & DK and Atlee. “Ironically, Samantha has worked with both the directors in the past,” Varun says.

“They're very different. The common factor is that they really believe in the worlds they create. There's absolute honesty in the worldbuilding. Which is why Atlee as well keeps hitting blockbuster after blockbuster because it might be larger than life, it might be fantastical even, but there's conviction in every character, every frame, every situation. As actors, we just submit to that conviction,” says Samantha, who starred in Atlee's 2016 Tamil action thriller Theri.

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The Hindustan Times spoke with the actor exclusively for the above quotes. He has done action before, be it athletics in his 2012 debut film, Karan Johar's campus caper Student of the Year, action mixed with comedy in David Dhawan's Main Tera Hero (2014) and Judwaa 2 (2017), a gory streak in Badlapur, good ol' buddy fighting in Rohit Shetty's Dilwale (2015) and Rohit Dhawan's Dishoom (2016), and most recently, CGI-created stunts in Amar Kaushik's creature film Bhediya (2022).

Baby John is bound to propel him as a massy action star, but in Citadel: Honey Bunny, he steps into a new-age action subgenre-the stuntman saving the day, à la Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019) or the more recent David Leitch's The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling.

“They're tough, they're tough as hell man. They have to have main character energy. They're doing stunts which are very daredevil. They're really doing it on the spot, there's no CG involved. I'm sure they get the stunt wrong sometimes, but they just get up and go back at it. I think ‘fearless’ is what comes to my mind," says Varun about playing a stunt guy.

The first look of Bunny, the character he plays in the show, is a preview of that – where he gets the right hero entry, before he is yanked back by a harness after the director calls cut. But as it works out in the above Hollywood films, it is the action guy who saves the day in real life and not the actor he's doubling up for.

Thanks to his father, veteran filmmaker David Dhawan, Varun has grown up on film sets in the 1990s, where Citadel: Honey Bunny is set. Even though he mostly made comedies, Varun has gotten a chance to speak to stuntmen over the years, which he's consolidated and incorporated into his performance.

“They love what they do. That's the sense I get. They're adrenaline junkies. They love they get paid to do this. They'll do it for free also. They get a very big kick out of this,” Varun says.

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