The dapper looking Manish Wadhwa is quite happy with his evil Kans character in &TV show, Paramavatar Shri Krishna.
Says Manish, “After playing subtle characters in both positive and negative genres, I wanted to try out larger than life avatars. Kans is not only bad, but also comic and psycho. The fact that he also cries and dances, makes it real fun to essay this character. Having said that, here we are not shooting in a normal mytho style that the villain needs to have a moustache and paunch. Kans can be good looking as well”, says Manish, who has earlier done a positive Ravana, in the super-hit Life OK show, Devo Ka Dev Mahadev.
“I have also tried to add various shades to my character, which otherwise gets boring, given that Kans’solo mission was to find Devaki’s eighth child, who was destined to kill him,” he states.
Point out that &TV has a limited reach, and Manish quips, “I don’t know about all that, but I am getting very good responses. Recently, I went to Rajasthan for some other shoot, and many people came forward to praise my work. But yes, had our show been on a bigger channel, it would have been a different ball game.”
Coming to the kid who plays Bal Krishna, he says, “Sweet Nirnay Samadhiya plays with me and even calls me mama. I also love him a lot. But yes, all this fun and games end when action is called. He is a very good actor as well.”
Ask Manish whether Krishna will grow up or the Bal leela will continue, given that kid mytho characters seem to work more, and he says, “Yes, my track will end when 15-year- old Krishna kills Kans, but till then, there are so many stories left to be told; we are just reaching Govardhan leela. As long as we are entertaining people, so be it. But it is not that only child mytho characters become famous; did Nitish Bharadwaj not gain name and fame as Krishna in B R Chopra’s Mahabharat?”
Manish, who has done several TV shows, such as Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Maha Kumbh: Ek Rahasaya, Ek Kahani, Peshwa Bajirao, etc. before, regards his stint as Chanakya in Imagine TV as his game-changer. “It was a challenge to reprise this great political thinker, for most remakes had fallen flat compared to what Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi had done, back in 1991. But I am glad I could pull off a decent job.”
He also does not think that online content is full of s*x and sleaze. “It all boils down to script requirement; if not, smart audiences reject it left, right and centre.”
Way to go, Manish!!
