By Anjuri Nayar Singh
Actor Abhishek Banerjee says he owes it to OTT as a platform for helping him change his image in showbiz. He was only being offered comic roles, and OTT shows helped change that.
“There is a nice word that people use, it’s ‘quirky’. I was only getting aquirkya? roles. I was getting worried that why am I getting only quirky roles. I was bored of it. Thankfully ‘Paatal Lok’ changed that. It taught people that I can do a lot more than comedy,” he told IANS.
“What OTT did was it gave me the audience’s eyes. It gave me stature. But what I feel is that OTT gave me that position of a well-rounded actor. Before that, I was doing only comic roles and I was tired of the kind of roles that I was offered all the time.
“I was like, I am not here to do only comedy. I can do a lot of other characters and I am prepared. All my training is to prove my versatility to filmmakers and the audience,” he says.
“I knew that I was part of something special while I was shooting for it. I just knew it. I used to always say that also. I knew that this was not like what I had done before. My film, ‘Stree’ was different as that was my first film and I was scared about what to do.
“In ‘Paatal Lok’, I had an understanding of what I was doing right or wrong. I was confident that it would do good but I didn’t know it would do so well. I didn’t understand the word ‘viral’ before it released,” he says.
He adds: “Before the trailer (launched), I was in a bad shape. I had finished my shoot and so many things were lined up, but suddenly everything stopped because of the lockdown. I realised that God had got me to the same position all over again.
“I used to complain a lot to the universe that why have you chosen me to be the victim.
“The minute the trailer hit the OTT channels, everything changed and I realised that it was a gift from the universe and I was totally in gratitude. It completely changed my life.”
Talking about his future plans, he says: “I want to pick up projects with moral values and responsibilities. I think it’s important for actors to do that. You need to have a voice that is important. I want to do projects which have something in the story.”
Source: IANS