From hair colour to braces, here’s how R Madhavan transformed into Nambi Narayan. Don’t miss Suriya and Shah Rukh Khan in BTS video

“The script had been written in a manner for which the requirement of me looking as close to the real Nambi sir as possible was mandatory. It was literally rocket science how the entire team planned the look from being a 29 year old man to 79 year old guy. To maneuver the look between our schedule of 43 days was one of our greatest achievements. You will see in the film how the transition of the look is so seamless that you would not even realise how and when the look changed,” he said in the video.

As the video continued, R Madhavan spilled the beans on two of the most difficult challenges he faced during the shoot. Madhavan said “manipulating my original teeth to look like his” was the most difficult part of the shoot. He explained that he wore braces to make his teeth look similar to Nambi Narayan’s. And for hair, the actor recalled he sat on a chair for 18 hours for three consecutive days as the team had to get the colour of his hair right.

In a couple of shots in the video, Madhavan looks exactly like Narayan. In fact, Suriya is seen expressing his shock over the resemblance. Suriya also looked ecstatic to meet Narayan on the sets. The Tamil superstar will be seen playing a cameo in the film. By the end of the video, we also spot Shah Rukh Khan, who plays a cameo in the Hindi version of the film.

Rocketry is based on the life of Nambi Narayanan, a former scientist and aerospace engineer of the Indian Space Research Organisation. In 1994, Narayanan was charged with leaking defence secrets. The scientist fought his own case in the Supreme Court and was declared not guilty in 1996.

The film had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this year. It will release in India on July 1 in Tamil, Hindi and English. It has also been dubbed in Telugu and Kannada.