Rajkummar Rao on the fear that made him say yes to Prahaar

Rajkummar Rao has built a reputation on choosing parts that ask more than comfort. His courtroom drama Prahaar: The Untold Story of Ujjwal Nikam fits that pattern, and the actor has now opened up about the hesitation that came with it.

The hesitation before the yes

Speaking with India Today alongside veteran special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, Rao recalled landing in Mumbai in February 2008 and closely following the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks. The project reached him through director Avinash Arun, his junior from the Film and Television Institute of India, who came to him with the biopic.

Rao’s first concern was physical resemblance. He admitted, “Initially I was scared because I don’t– there’s no match.”

Fear as a green light

That fear did not send him away from the part. As Rao puts it, “jab koi cheez darati hai to mujhe usko aur karne ka mann karta hai”—when something scares him, he wants to do it more, because it gives him something to push against.

For Hindi film fans, that line explains a lot about his choices. Playing a real prosecutor carries the weight of a public record, and the least comfortable path is often the one with the highest creative stakes.

What Prahaar sets out to answer

Rao says the film places Nikam’s work between two defining Mumbai moments: the 1993 blasts trial and the 2008 attacks. It also opens up the legal procedures and personal sacrifices behind those years, taking on a question that lingered after 26/11—why the case took time to reach its conclusion.

Here is what to look for when the film arrives:

• The long arc from the 1993 Mumbai blasts trial to the 2008 attacks.
• The personal cost and legal grind behind public prosecutions.
• A closer look at why the 26/11 proceedings took time.

For the audience, this matters because biopics often get judged on surface similarity first. Rao’s admission reframes that conversation: the question is not whether he looks like Nikam, but whether he can carry the authority, restraint and emotional weight of a man who argued some of India’s most scrutinised cases.

The result sounds like a biopic less interested in easy heroics and more in the system, patience and pressure that hold a high-stakes courtroom fight together.

Source: India Today