Actor Rohit Roy became as popular as film star Shah Rukh Khan back in the 1990s after doing the show ‘Swabhimaan’. However, he feels that he didn’t handle his success well.
Actor Rohit Roy has been one of the very few actors who started from TV and went on to become massively successful in both TV and films. He has been doing some great work on OTT in the past few years. His recent short film ‘Verses Of War’ did great online and so did his last OTT show, ‘Sanak – Ek Junoon’. He seems to be enjoying this new digital medium as lots of new opportunities seem to be coming his way.
“Of course yes. The hungry technicians, actors, directors want to do OTT shows because they can tell their own stories in the way they want to and there is no risk of failure in the box-office. Talented actors are getting roles and even directors who could not make films in the mainstream are making great movies. I think OTT is a big thing. We don’t even know the power of OTT yet in India. I think it is going to grow exponentially in the coming years,” says Rohit Roy.
But he began his career with the most popular TV show of the 1990s ‘Swabhimaan’, and his character of Rishabh Malhotra became as popular as film star Shah Rukh Khan was at that time. But over the course of his career, he somewhat moved away from TV. “Actually I did not move away from television at all. I have been doing stuff on and off. I just did one show before the lockdown called ‘Sanjeevani’ and then I also did another show on star plus but the show shut down. I am absolutely ok with television and I have never shied away but then I feel roles dry up because now they are not going to call me for just another character. They will either call me for the main antagonist or the main protagonist, someone who drives the show. Unfortunately because of this, the choices dry up and I am not going to take roles that are absolutely unchallenging. Maybe this is the reason why people don’t see me on television shows as much as they want to. However, I am looking for interesting television roles to do,” opines Rohit Roy.
When someone has such a long career, some regrets along the path are bound to happen. “Of course, I have. My biggest regret is that I should have handled the initial part of my career with a lot more grace and craft instead of running after stardom. It is like a small-town boy story. I came from Ahmedabad and became a roaring success but when you are not used to handling that kind of stardom and you don’t know how to handle it, you go berserk. The same happened with me and I forgot to put in extra effort in my craft and kept on doing the same stuff again and again. I took everything for granted and I had started thinking that everything I do would go great and become a hit. However, I take all of this as a learning and I think those difficult times have made me a better actor and a more mature person,” adds Rohit Roy.
On the topic of regrets, if he had to give some advice to his 10-year old self, what would that be? “I would advise the 10-year-old Rohit Roy to be patient and do not take your success so seriously that it goes to your head and believe in yourself and not in what somebody says about you,” concludes Rohit Roy.