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In the film that sees most of his Iqbal crew back in action, Nagesh has broken many rules of comedy. “That’s for me the definition of wacky comedy — one in which my characters do many weird things and yet there is logic in their actions. I call it creative freedom.” And as for the Iqbal crew, “it wasn’t so much a conscious effort to reunite all of them as to make my next film quickly,” he says.

In ‘B2B’ which is a love story between an Indian boy (Shreyas Talpade) and a Thai girl (Lena Christensen), Nagesh shows the culture clashes between the two. To choose his heroine from Thailand, he conducted “painfully boring” auditions in which most girls either didn’t know English or did not look “Oriental” enough. The process also triggered the idea of love that can happen without the barrier of language.

“Most romance or love is about perfect communication. So I thought why not talk about the love that happens without communication. So in this film, both the boy and the girl don’t talk in each other’s language till the end. It is just the few words and pure emotions that bind the two. That is where exploring the culture of Thailand also came in,” says Nagesh. Unlike many other filmmakers, he feels India is quite a shooting-friendly country, except that there are “lakhs of people watching you.”

Nagesh is known for breaking rules in his films. But “to the point that the producer gets his money back.” He says initially he felt a little lonely in the industry, but now, since he has a “track record” of making good films, many are offering to produce his works!

In his forthcoming films too, he refuses to play by the rules. In Aashain, he talks about learning to live life ‘now’ and not waiting for that moment to come. “It is an emotional film with lots of ‘sweet’ drama.” It stars John Abraham. His Tasveer “is a thriller” — beyond this, he doesn’t want to “burst the bubble” — and Bemisaal is “an uplifting story based on true life.”

Acting is his passion, direction came by training. “I am a trained actor from Atlanta so I don’t let this training go waste,” says the man who usually takes a small role in his films.

“But I enjoy direction more now as that way I have my finger in every pie,” he adds.

Few know that Nagesh is a trained dancer. He says, “I have learnt the fox trot, salsa, tango, cha-cha-cha, ballroom dancing, swing….”

For now though, his actors dance to his tunes.

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