One of his favourite scenes was between Irrfan and him on a terrace. Immediately after Abbaji is murdered, Irrfan hands him a gun and tells him, "Goli maar ya gale lag ja [Kill me or hug me]."

"That scene had ample scope for performance. My character was very confused then: did Maqbool mean what he said? Could he be trusted? Even after that scene, when Kaka sits in the car, he is still wondering if he did the right thing by hugging him. He's never fully convinced," Mishra says.

Before Mishra stepped into films, he had tried his hand in television. He appeared in Tigmanshu Dhulia's serial, Rajdhani, for over a year. "I did television because I wanted the experience of acting in front of the camera. I wanted to be comfortable in front of the camera," he explains. "It took me time to adapt to cinema, so I would keep practising.

"I did not like myself in my first film, Dil Se... I did not know much about articulation or speech. Nothing was in my control. I was just there. But in Maqbool, I was prepared, so it worked," he says.

For his role as Kaka in Maqbool, he says, "I went beyond the script and analysed my character. I thought of situations that must have happened. For example, when Kaka first met Abbaji, how his wife died, when Kaka meets Maqbool. My character must have been a small-time goon before he met Abbaji. Later, I must have been the one to introduce Nimmi (Tabu) to Abbaji. She must have wanted to become an actress and so on."

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