Actors play many different roles every day and somewhere, deep down, these characters affect them. Such is the story with actor Sanjay Gagnani, who plays a negative role in the show Kundali Bhagya. The actor says that the character affected him to the extent that he had to do a few things to make himself feel better. “It’s too emotionally taxing.

Initially, it affected me too much. I became short-tempered, snappy and sad. My friends and family felt weird about my behaviour. I had to eat a lot of dark chocolates every night to feel good. Slowly and gradually, things became better and I learnt to balance and cut off from my character once I wrapped up the shoot,” he says.

Ask him if he feels that he will be typecast after playing this role, and he says, “I’m not at all scared of getting typecast because the trends have changed now. The audiences are ready to accept a villain as a hero and a hero as a villain in today’s times. There are a lot of examples where an actor who once played a hero has been playing a villain in a certain TV show or a film and vice versa. I believe I will definitely get a wide range of roles in the future.”

Talking about the kind of roles that he wants to play, he says he is looking for a positive one. “I want to prove my mettle, consistency and versatility as an actor in a positive role too, after playing an antagonist. When I started as an actor, my dream role was to play a romantic hero but as I gained experience and started learning and observing characters, my interest in exploring different characters increased. Now, I don’t mind playing any character as long as the character is powerful and demands a lot of scope and range from me as an actor and pushes me to go in the space I’ve never been and touched before.”