With back-to-back shows and films such as “Guns & Gulaabs”, “Bad Cop” and now “Ulajh”, Gulshan Devaiah seems to be on a roll and the actor credits it to his attitude of not being too "result-oriented".
Devaiah said very early in his life, he learned that whenever he was too focused on the end result, thing turned out to be bad. “In my life, whenever I’ve been result-oriented, I’ve failed. Careerwise, whenever I’ve tried to be funny or tried to entertain people consciously, it didn't work. I’ve to just focus on what I'm doing and try to do my best. So, my approach to my career, and my craft is also like that. If I find something interesting, I’ll do it,” Devaiah told PTI in an interview.
The actor, known for his work in “Shaitan”, “Hunterrr”, “Badhaai Do” and “Dahaad”, said he does not try to calculate or control things like whether people are going to watch the projects he stars in or how they are going to respond to his characters, the scale of the release of a movie and its box office prospects.
“We're all human, so sometimes you're not able to give your best but that's life. Everything else is incidental, the results will come, and they are always incidental. It's the process and how you approach it and what you do with your skill sets (that matters). This perspective is good for me and it keeps my ego in check. The moment I feel that I get result-oriented, I'm going to lose the plot,” he added.
Devaiah said he is more visible now because he is offered “more interesting” things thanks to OTT platforms where long format storytelling has been empowered and “writers and directors” are given more power.
“It creates more opportunities for people like me, the technicians and everybody else. There's more work going around. So, that's the reason why I was a bit slow towards the beginning of my career but now it's a bit more frequent, like two or three projects a year,” the actor said.
Devaiah, 46, said with more opportunities he has to be mindful of the potential drawbacks of overcommitting and the toll it may take on his health.
“When I was shooting for ‘Ulajh’ and I came back, I had less than a week to prepare for something else that I was doing and I kind of struggled in the first seven to eight days of shooting. I didn't have enough time to sort of prepare for that. I'm an experienced actor, so the experience also pulls me through but sometimes it just drains you out a little bit… Sometimes your body would be like, ‘Hey bro, slow down’.” He said he boarded the patriotic thriller because he liked his role in it. The movie is headlined by Janhvi Kapoor and directed by Sudhanshu Saria of “Loev” fame.
“I’ve to find the part that's been offered to me interesting and that's paramount. Also, I’m at that stage where it has to make sense for my career because it should be a project that's good for my career,” he said.
“Ulajh” also starring Roshan Mathew, Adil Hussain, Rajesh Tailang, Meiyang Chang, Rajendra Gupta, and Jitendra Joshi, released in theatres on August 2.
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