Dino Morea On Receiving Accolades For His Work In ‘The Empire’: ‘I Gave It My All’

The period drama, ‘The Empire’, which released on Disney+Hotstar recently has been receiving mixed reviews so far. But, Dino Morea, who played the antagonist in the eight-episode series, is receiving praises and accolades from across the country.

Speaking to Outlook,  Dino Morea says while he did not “anticipate” the “extremely positive feedback” he has received for playing the role of a menacing Shaibani Khan, he is “grateful to the audiences” since he put in a lot of effort for it.  

“I was starving for work. When you are starving for work, and you are hungry, you give it your all. So, I prepared for the role really well, and I gave it my all, not really thinking about what the outcome would be. I did not anticipate this kind of reaction at all, you know,” he says.

“I read the script many times. He is evil for a certain reason. He is savage brutal. He believes throne has to be earned. You can’t just inherit it.  You have to fight for it. I compared him to a panther. Because you don’t know whether, he is going to hunt you, or just walk right past you. That’s what we wanted to evoke that. So that the audience keep watching also what he is going to do next,” the actor-producer adds .

What satisfies him even more, is the fact that audiences “accepted” him in a negative role.

“I am just extremely grateful that somebody saw me in a different light. I am not saying I am making a conscious effort to do different roles, but I want to be in different kind of projects. I am still open to play a romantic hero, or a lover boy, but it has to be different than all the roles or characters I have done in the past. It has to excite me as an actor,” he says.

“I want to do different roles. When you play a negative character, as an actor, you can just go mad. People can see my versatility and go like ‘Oh! s**t this guy can actually do it. Even in ‘Hostages 2’, it was a guest appearance, but people remembered the remember the character,” he signs off.