Actor Abhimanyu Singh, who played the iconic role of Ranajay ‘Ransa’ Singh in Anurag Kashyap‘s Gulaal, recently opened up about his journey as an actor and shared many anecdotes from his time in the industry. One such story was about how Anurag Kashyap cast him in Gulaal, alongside Kay Kay Menon, Raj Singh Chaudhary, Deepak Dobriyal, Piyush Mishra and Mahie Gill.
In an interview with Filmygyan, the actor talked about struggling to find work, and having to do bit parts in films and television shows to get by. Through all this, he never gave up on theatre. “When Aks flopped, I was doing TV serials and small films for survival, but I never stopped doing theatre. I was doing play after play, and my last play was with Anurag Kashyap and Makarand Deshpande.” The actor’s dedication towards his performance definitely paid off, as his work on the stage opened doors for him to return to Bollywood.
“During rehearsals one day, I got carried away, and I lost the sense of reality and completely forgot that I was performing, or rather, rehearsing. So, I ended up breaking an empty beer bottle that was supposed to be used as a prop in rehearsal, and when the sound came and pieces of glass flew everywhere, all the actors, including people in the backstage who were watching, were luckily not hit,” said the actor.
“Makarand Deshpande, my guru, screamed loudly at me and said, ‘Are you crazy? How can you forget you are acting?’” He only said this once, and the rehearsal went on, but after it ended, Anurag came up to me, impressed with what I did, and told me that ‘today I saw my Ransa in you.’ He said that he was directing a new film, Gulaal, and that ‘Ransa is the best character in the film which I want you to play for me,’” shared the actor.
Abhimanyu Singh was last seen in the controversial but superhit L2: Empuraan, alongside Mohanlal and Prithviraj Sukumaran.
