Gaurav and The Blood Diamond

What character role is Gaurav Chopra essaying in the Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connely, Djimon Hounsou starrer The Blood Diamond? Is he playing an Indian or French journalist in the film set for an Indian release in the coming week?

Gaurav who has about a couple of minutes of acting and screen time in the movie insists that he plays an Indian journo, but the credits in the screeners and in the official site of the film credit him as a French journalist.

"The fact is that I am playing an Indian reporter," he says emphatically. "The credits have not been updated in the site or in the screeners of the movie."

The film is about the illegal diamond trafficking and civil unrest in Sierra Leone Africa. Gaurav is part of a press convoy -consisting of Connely, DiCaprio, Hounsou and other journalists - which is seeking to do the rounds of rebel camps in buses and a SUV. The rebels, mainly minor children, are pitched in battles and skirmishes with government troops as they indiscriminately go about killing innocents and capturing territory in the African region.

In the track involving Gaurav, the journos get down from the bus en-route to the rebel camps to take pictures of a van which has been attacked by the brigands only to have the latter train their guns on them. As they scramble to get back on the bus, Gaurav blocks Hounsou - who has rescued a child, from boarding the bus saying there is no space. When Connely asks him to give the black man space, he screams at her to give up her seat for him. DiCaprio then grabs Gaurav by the collar roughs him up a bit and tells him to allow Hounsou on board.

The Titanic and The Departed star finally decides against boarding the bus, and instead chooses to travel with Connely and Hounsu in a SUV. Thankfully because a few scenes later rebels and government soldiers once again attack the convoy and practically everyone in the bus is killed whereas the trio in the SUV escape..

Gaurav says the experience of working with a director like Edward Zwick was really great and that he would cherish it for personal reasons rather than professional. "I was treated with great respect during the fifteen days that I was shooting there. I was never treated as somebody who had come down from India for a cameo. In fact I was treated equally like the main leads of the film and that was amazing."

Gaurav says he missed out on a role in a European TV show Snitch earlier this year because of his contract with Nach Baliye. Now, he is looking forward to The Blood Diamond's release.

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