Irrfan Khan is one of the best in doing comedy: Blackmail director Abhinay Deo

As Abhinay Deo gears up to launch 'Badla', a song that extensively features Irrfan Khan from his upcoming film Blackmail, he says the actor — mostly known for intense roles — has his own way to make a funny scene "hilarious".

Of late, one has seen glimpses of Khan's innate ability to slip into roles with a comical streak in Piku (2015), Hindi Medium (2017) as opposed to his more serious side in past films.

Deo, who enjoyed directing the National Award winner in Blackmail, told IANS, a news agency, "According to me, for an actor, comedy is the most difficult genre to pull off. It is all about timing and in this territory [and] Irrfan is one of the best. It was such a joy to watch him convert a scene which was funny on paper to hilarious as he performed it live. He is a master in doing less to express more. In this film, he had very few lines and that makes it very difficult as everything depends on his expressions."

Khan has been out of action since sometime, and he announced earlier this month that he is suffering from a "rare disease". But he did not want the release of Blackmail to be pushed owing to his inability to promote it. So, the makers are going ahead and giving it the "best release" as scheduled on 6 April as per the actor's wish.

The film's third song comes out on Friday (16 March).

"The 'Badla' song is something which is kind of a theme song of Irrfan's character in the movie. You would understand it better when you see the song.

"Common sense would say why are we doing the event when our principal protagonist is physically not present, but we as makers want to talk about the song in detail. And we would discuss certain facts which become very important in terms of Irrfan's performance and his contribution to the film," he said.

Blackmail also features Kirti Kulhari, Divya Dutta, Arunoday Singh, Omi Vaidya, Anuja Sathe, Pradhuman Singh Mall and Gajraj Rao.

It is produced by T-Series's Bhushan Kumar and Deo's RDP Motion Pictures.

In the past, Deo has helmed films like Game (2011), Delhi Belly (2011) and Force 2 (2016). He also directed Anil Kapoor's thrilling TV series 24.