NEW DELHI: Arshad Warsi got critical acclaim for his performance in “Jolly LLB” and now Akshay Kumar, who is set to take on his role in a sequel to the 2013 hit courtroom drama, credited the star for making Jolly’s character popular.

The first part revolved around the early life of lawyer Jagdish Tyagi aka Jolly (Arshad) and focused on his attempt to earn six innocent wage earners their rights, while the sequel “Jolly LLB 2” will follow the story of Jagdishwar Mishra (Akshay), a lawyer who is fighting a case against the “state”.

Akshay, 49, said he did not have to work hard on his character as Arshad had already made “quite a few things easy for him” by doing a great job in the first movie. “I didn’t prepare much for the role. Because I’m from North India only and my language is kind of similar to that of UP and I have a good control on Hindi. “Plus, Arshad Warsi, who played Jolly in part one, made a lot of things easy for me. I already knew that how I was going to play the character. Then my director ( Subhash Kapoor) has been a political journalist. He comes with a great experience. I just followed him,” Akshay said during a promotional event of the film. When asked if he met lawyers in order to get into shoes of his part, Akshay said, “I did not meet anyone. I had enough information and I had Subhash Kapoor with me. I just followed him because he met many lawyers so there’s no point me meeting some more lawyers. “I’m already following somebody who knows about this world a lot.—PTI