A great storyline, character, and a good production, Udne ki Aasha ticked all of actor Devashish boxes, which is why he came on board. The actor, who plays the role of Aakash, the main lead Sachin’s younger brother in the show, says that it has been quite a journey for him, till here.
“I started off working as a junior artist for many TV shows. I used to get like 500 rupees per day, when I was 16 years old. My first show was Spy Bahu and I was playing the younger brother to the male lead. It went up for a long time. I had another show Apnapan on Sony TV. I was doing two shows at that time, and it was fun doing both shows, and traveling between Powai and Film City. The character was the same and so I didn’t have to change my look much. After that, I took a break for 3 months and started auditioning. One of the biggest breakthroughs for me was Bade Acche Lagte Hain 2. After the leap, I played the negative lead for almost a year and that show was really good, the cast was amazing, and I met a lot of people. I was playing six emotions at once; manipulation, anger, love, fight …everything was all together. I did Barsaatein, where I played a Punjabi Munda, again a fun character, that lights up the mood of the show. After that, I landed up on Udne Ki Aasha on Star Plus,” he says.
Produced by Rahul Kumar Tewary, the show was a good opportunity, says the actor, adding, “The fact that I got to work with him, his production and the story; I was all sold. All the characters were very different from what I had done before. They were very positive. My character really gathers the family and wants to keep them together, so the character sounded really good. I always wanted to cook food and I am playing a chef so that’s a lot of fun as well. The story is great, the production is great and I have really good things about Rahul Tewary.”
Talking about the show, he says, “Udne Ki Aasha, as the name says it, is just so dreamy and so beautiful. In India, everyone has this one hope that everyone wants to fulfil. The guy and girl want to do something out of their comfort zones, and the family wants them both to have a good life; one is from the lower middle class, and the other from the upper middle class, so things are quite different.”
He adds, “I feel the title itself motivates me, whenever I heard the song Dil hain Chota Sa, it used to give me motivation and so much positivity. The energy is good and positive on the set as well.”
Meanwhile, the actor loves playing his character. “My character is quite fun to play with because the guy really wants to get this family together and everyone in his family loves him. He aspires to become a chef and wants to make big bucks thanks to his talent and studies. His mother is quite interested but since they are from a middle-class family background, she wants him to have a 9 to 5 job. But his father and brother are in support,” he says.
He adds, “The only difficult thing for me was to trim and shave my beard because every time I go on screen, I have a little bit of beard which looks good on me. But this character is very young, he is also a chef, and so I needed a clean look. It was very difficult for me to understand at first, but later on, seeing myself in the character changed my perspective and the whole persona.”
Shooting on set is fun, he says, adding, “All the characters, the whole family onscreen sit and eat food together, at times, Neha joins us too. We eat a lot of different types of food because Radhika Vidyasagar gets a lot of Maharashtrian food, I bring a lot of healthy food, and sometimes on cheat meals I get pasta. Kanwar is always eating a healthy-no carbs diet and his food is also very tasty. So, we used to order a lot of different food. The gang is amazing and all the actors are my favourite.”
He adds, “There are a lot of fun moments, there was once when I had to say a line and I forgot the lines and everyone was looking at me. So I just randomly started blabbering, just to make sure that everyone thinks that I hadn’t forgotten my lines. I started saying something in Marathi and everyone was watching wondering if these were the lines I were given I apologized later and everyone started laughing.”
