Metro Shirish got himself into more than one sticky situation while shooting for his upcoming Raja Ranguski, in which he plays a cop. The first was when he was shooting in the busy streets of Sowcarpet, during Holi. “I was wearing a police uniform and riding a bike, when a group of people stopped me,” he says. “They thought I was a real police officer, and wanted me to stop a bunch of unruly youngsters from creating nuisance.” Shirish wanted nothing more than to quickly ride away, but he couldn’t, considering that the crowd had overpowered him. The streets were too narrow for a getaway too. “They were all getting upset that I wasn’t taking action,” he says. “Luckily, I got out of the situation by mumbling, “Illai, illai,’, and raced past them to the safety of the shoot’s location.”

A few days later, almost the opposite happened when he got stopped by real cops. This time though, thankfully, he wasn’t wearing a police uniform, even though he was wearing khakhi pants. It was way past midnight on OMR, and Shirish, who was wearing a mask, also had a Red Dragon film camera strapped on to the front of the bike. Naturally, this piqued the attention of the police, who wanted to know what he was up to. “Thankfully, director Dharanitharan and the unit were travelling behind me, and so could convince the police that we weren’t up to anything illegal,” he says.

Raja Ranguski stars Metro Shirish and Chandini Tamilarasan, and has music by Yuvan Shankar Raja.