Jaideep Ahlawat,
Jitendra Kumar,
Pratik Gandhi and
Vijay Varma are considered some of the finest actors on the OTT space. While they got their share of appreciation quite late, the actors have seen a lot of struggle when they came to Mumbai. Recently these actors appeared on
Kapil Sharma’s show and also opened up on their journeys.
During the chat, Jaideep Ahlawat opened up about his early days in Mumbai, when he lived in a tiny one-bedroom flat with five others. “We were only two people in the beginning, but then we became six people in one BHK because someone or the other would ask for a place to stay, and we would allow them to stay with us," he shared. "So the bedroom of my house was filled with clothes, and we all would just lay together in the open kitchen and hall. But we had fun, there was no sadness about it.”
Pratik Gandhi also talked about his struggles, recalling how his scene in Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji was removed. “I was playing a small role in the film. I even auditioned for the role but when the film released, I realised that my role has been cut,” he said. Luckily, he’d told no one about it. “But the good part was that I didn’t tell anyone that I was a part of the film.”
Panchayat star Jitendra Kumar, an IIT graduate, revealed that he once gave up on acting and left Mumbai just three months after arriving. He had applied to NSD too, but got rejected. “When I was leaving in the train after three months of coming to Bombay, I told myself that I’m going to come back and I came back, and thankfully, people liked my work,” he said.
He also remembered a funny incident at IIT Kharagpur, when he met
Naseeruddin Shah while shooting a short film with a senior. Jitendra got so excited that he ended up bothering the veteran actor. Thankfully, his senior stepped in and asked Shah to bless their script. Shah wasn’t impressed. He said, “Blessings wouldn’t help and that they needed to rehearse a lot if they wanted to make a good film.”