Akshay Oberoi is not letting Toxic’s box-office result rewrite his memory of making it. In an exclusive conversation with Filmibeat, the actor said the Yash-starrer still holds a special place for him, even though it did not deliver the expected numbers.
Oberoi, who made his debut in Isi Life Mein in 2010 and has spent almost two decades in the industry, is currently enjoying the response to his Netflix film Gajab Raat. But it was his candour about Toxic, an ambitious film in which he played an important role, that stood out.
An enormous film, a disappointing result
Asked how he looks at a film that misses audience expectations, Oberoi said he does not see it as his place to question the outcome. “I had a great time making it,” he said. “Toxic was an enormous movie, and it will always have a special place in my heart because of the cast, the crew, the ambition of that film and what we were trying to make.”
He was equally direct about the result. “No one sets out to make a film that people don’t like,” he told Filmibeat. “We all gave our blood, sweat and tears to it. And it didn’t work. It didn’t work. Yeah, that’s life.”
Why the numbers don’t change the memory
Oberoi’s larger point is that a film’s commercial performance and the experience of making it can be two different things. He said he still loves the film, loved the process, and learned from the scale, the cast and the filmmaking ambition.
He then put it in terms any family can understand. “If a kid fails in school, it’s not like I don’t like the child anymore,” he said. “That particular exam he was not able to pass. So that’s kind of what this is like for me.”
He also accepted that performers do not have much room to hide in the social media age. “The world knows everything these days,” he said. “There’s social media, and what can you hide?”
What this says about the box-office conversation
Bollywood often treats the opening weekend as the whole story. Oberoi’s point is useful because it separates two things that get tangled together: whether a film made money, and whether it was meaningful to the people who made it.
- Experience vs result: A film can be creatively fulfilling and commercially unsuccessful at the same time.
- No one plans a flop: Oberoi says everyone sets out to entertain the audience, not to be rejected.
- Authenticity is practical: With social media numbers everywhere, acknowledging failure is simpler than pretending.
For fans, that is a reminder to assess a film on its own terms, not just by the box-office ticker. For the actor, Toxic is not a wound to defend; it is a project he remains attached to.
Source: Filmibeat