Abhishek Banerjee

I think whenever you transform from normal light-hearted characters, to characters which might be out of your comfort zone or less relatable, that is double the work and commitment required to understand the society that character comes from.

After 'Stree', I started believing that yes, I am an actor. 'Paatal Lok' happened at the right time, when I was ready to go deep, to create something of my own and I gave it all.

When I came to Mumbai, I knew that I am an actor but I am not a working actor. To keep this actor alive, I had to feed him, I took up the casting job so that I can run my house.

I have always been an Amitabh Bachchan fan.

I'll always be very proud of giving Priyanshu Painyuli and Siddhant Chaturvedi their first break. Both are phenomenal actors and I am very excited about their future.

No, I don't think it is required for casting directors to be actors too. My mentor Gautam Kishanchandani cannot act to save his life!

The thing with the film industry is if you become popular in one kind of role, you keep getting cast in the same thing.

You are as good as your co-actor.

Because I have done different kinds of roles, I hope that people take me as an actor they want to experiment with.

I would not want compliments that 'I can do different roles'. I want compliments that whatever I did, I did nicely. That's how I see acting.

When you are reacting to a good actor, your reactions become better. You get to know what to tone down and how to make yourself believe in those characters.

When I came to Mumbai to act and it didn't work out for me for few years, I thought I will go back to training but casting room has been a great training space for me.

For me, it was always that one extra job that you do to survive in the industry. I also realised that I was not well-sculpted as an actor because I was getting a lot of rejections. I stopped acting and focused on casting.

That's the beauty of creative industry that when one thing does not pan out, you have other things to do.

I'm cooking and taking the lockdown as an experience in cooking, trying different things. Apart from that it has been listeniing to music and watching documentaries.

I always think of my characters as alive human beings and try to generate questions around their life and understand their socio-political background. It was a lot of questioning and reading.

Whether you believe it or not, you have to understand the politics. In every script, there is a political bend that the writer has included. Whether you like it or not, is on you. But it's very important to know that politics.

It feels great when you get to contribute in a show or a film in several ways. When you see lesser known actors coming in small roles and leaving an impact, you feel like they are your babies.

When you are a talkative and expressive person in real life, it definitely gets difficult to play someone who is so silent.

I think writers should create characters who are human and have a character arc of their own.

All my characters have their own political thoughts of the world around. If it is not in the script, I put it into them so that they become rooted to the local flavour.

I grew up in Chennai and was very much influenced by Rajinikant's stardom and importance of cinema in Tamil culture.

I love both acting and casting, and the idea will be to pursue both.

But I was always an actor, and I kept telling myself that there will be a day when I will become a good actor.

Casting director was a part-time thing, which later became a full-time job because there was a lack of casting directors in our industry and people were looking for professionals to do it.