Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s sports drama Toofaan, featuring Farhan Akhtar, Mrunal Thakur and Paresh Rawal in the lead, released today on Amazon Prime Video amidst unanimous praise from all over. The film tells the story of a former boxer who is motivated by his wife to get back in the ring.
The film also features Darshan Kumaar as a boxer and even on screen, boxing came with a lot of challenges. Farhan and Darshan were both trained by Hollywood fitness expert and boxing trainer Darrell Foster, who has trained Will Smith for several of his projects and eight pro-world champions, and Darshan informs that his training was more natural than just for the camera. And that left him with more than just some bruises during one of the boxing scenes in the film.
Darshan recalls the incident when Farhan had to punch him in the face with an upper cut for a scene. “Our trainer Darrell Foster believes in real punches and for that scene, it had to be shot five-six times from different angles, and Farhan bhai was hitting me for real. He told me that he was scared about hitting me and I told him to not think about it as we were creating history. I told him the pain will go within a week but this will remain forever and he was damn impressed by that,” he recalls.
However, the after affects of that scene were a bit more than what Darshan expected. “After that scene, I was on a liquid diet for a week as I couldn’t even open my mouth. So, that was really challenging for me. But now everyone is loving my fight sequences with Farhan bhai and it feels that hamari mehnat safal hui,” he concludes.
Image source: Focus PR, Instagram/faroutakhtar