Ahead of the release of Netflix series Mismatched, actor, former MTV VJ and long-standing host of Roadies Rannvijay Singha spoke to Sneha Menon Desai about why we so rarely see him in films, being typecast in the industry, and wanting to play more varied roles.
Edited Excerpts:
Sneha Menon Desai: I am curious to know why we haven't seen you in more films, have you just not been looking hard enough? Or do Bollywood roles not appeal to you?
Rannvijay Singha: I have tried to do some stuff when I was a little younger. I have actually done ten films and I apologize for most of them. I started noticing that people's perception of success was that you're only successful if you do fiction. Whereas I am still busy pretty much every day of my life because I realized that for me to be successful, I don't have to just be in fiction, I could do anything.
Success for me is not defined by only doing films, so I stopped doing roles just for the sake of getting another project. A lot of people take on small roles in the hopes of getting a chunkier role, but I realised that to be successful, I didn't need to do another small role. I think because of that, people got the idea that 'oh maybe, he isn't interested in acting'. That's why I only do a couple of things here and there.
Because I was a MTV VJ, a lot of the roles I was getting were 'Yo, Vicky beta is here' or 'DJ Rocky is here' and I didn't want to do that. I want to do something really different. I did a film with Nagesh Kukunoor and I was like 'wow man, this is what acting is all about'. It was amazing and those are the kinds of things I want to be a part of and moving forward, I want to to do more fiction projects where I am an important piece of the puzzle.