Taking on a character, and actually emulating his every move is a process, says actor Eklavya Sood, who is part of the web series Raisinghani v/s Raisinghani. He says that he has a full step by step procedure on how to start living a character.
Eklavya, who has been seen in films,Trek To Neverland, and Ittar, says that he loves the character that he is playing in his brand new web series. “I’m playing the character of Harsh Nokwal in the show, who plays a love interest to Ankita. The character is multidimensional and to an extent, has his own agenda in the show, which is kind of revealed later,” he says.
Talking about what drew him to the role, he says, “So while I was prepping for this character, I got a brief from the creative director, Bhavna, ma’am, as well as the writer. And they saw the character as a little bit of a South Bombay boy, but his energy was very childlike, very infectious. He sort of brightens every room that he is in. So, that energy, that flamboyance was what drew me towards this character. As an actor, we are always trying to play characters that are different from us, as well as from what we’ve done in the past. My last film, Trek to Neverland, which is doing a festival run at the moment, had me playing a very very different character than this one. As actors we always want to play a character that is distinct, has his own ideology, philosophy and soul .”
Now, for the preparation part, Eklvaya says that he went through it step-wise. “Every character has a different process of being brought to life on screen. For this character, I first read the entire dockets that were shared with me. I read the entire script multiple times. When you’re reading these scripts, you form the character in your mind and think about how he behaves, what his body language is going to be like. And then you start to work on the backstory of the character. I wrote a five to seven page backstory for this character. I shared that with the writers to see whether I’m on the same page or not. Once they approved that, I started walking onto the streets trying to emulate the characters body language. I met a couple of South Bombay kids as well, and observed their body language. But the most interesting part of this entire journey was trying to crack a playlist for this character. For him I thought about what kind of music would like to listen to. For me, music is of great importance. It helps me get in and out of the character and emotions. Eventually I came to the conclusion that he listens to a lot of Ranveer Singh high energy songs. He listens to a lot of raps, Indian raps by KRSNA, Sidhu Moosewala, Karan Aujla. A few of them were foreign rappers as well.So all these songs basically helped me get into the skin of the character. And while we were shooting I had a process of updating the characters playlist. During this process I found a song that was perfect for the relationship between Harsh and Ankita (Reem’s character). The song is Baby Marvake Maanegi by Raftaar. I am sure people will understand why I chose this song when Harsh and Ankita’s chemistry is established, ” he says.
