Kay Kay Menon, who won accolades for essaying Rakesh Maria in 'Black Friday', has never met the new Mumbai police commissioner

Kay Kay Menon is currently shooting for Vishal Bharadwaj's 'Haider' in Pahalgam in Kashmir. Due to the freezing climes and phone connectivity issues, the actor prefers to leave his cell in his hotel room when he's on the sets. `I have been cut off from what is happening in Mumbai,` he says.

Best remembered for his role as top cop Rakesh Maria in Anurag Kashyap's 2007 film 'Black Friday', Maria becoming Mumbai's new police commissioner comes as news to him. Kay Kay's performance as Maria, who was the then DCP, was widely appreciated. The actor confesses that he did not meet Maria while preparing for the role.

He says, `When I was approached to play this character, I did not do any research on my own. Everyone knew Maria as the cop who had played a major role in solving the 1993 Bombay blasts case. I had read about him, but I chose to go with the director's vision. Of course, there were a lot of inputs from writer S Hussain Zaidi (on whose book the film is based). He told me a lot about Rakesh Maria.`


The actor adds that the film was not Rakesh Maria's biography; that it was a docudrama about the blasts and the ensuing investigations. `If I had met him, his persona could have overwhelmed me. Regardless, many people told me that my role reminded them of Maria,` he says.

He also confesses that though he has played a cop in other films, 'Black Friday' remains special to him. `I was not playing a random policeman in the film. It was an incident that changed the city,` says Kay Kay, who will be next seen in Anurag Kashyap's film, 'Bombay Velvet'.