Vikrant Massey reveals quitting TV at the age of 24 while earning Rs 35 lakh a month

Vikrant Massey

Actor Vikrant Massey is currently basking in the success of his last release'12th Fail' directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Based on a true story, the film sees Vikrant play the role of a man aspiring to become an IAS officer. Vikrant started his acting career with television and slowly progressed his way to the big screen.

Recently, in an interview with Youtuber Samdish Bhatia, Vikrant spoke about leaving TV at a time when he was earning a lot of money. I earned a lot of money through TV I bought my first house at the age of 24. But there was regressing content on TV and wanted to move to cinema". The thought came to Vikrant at the age of 23-24 when he bought his first house and cleared all his debts. Then he realized that he had money but not peace of mind. He quit TV and exhausted his savings in 1.5 years. It was his then-girlfriend (now wife) Sheetal Thakur who helped him financially and gave him "pocket-money" to attend auditions.

Talking further about why he felt like quitting TV, he said, "There were many, which were happening repetitively, which is why I left TV. Universally, everyone was doing the same thing. Be it any field, when a certain thing works, only its versions are then replicated. So on TV when misogynistic content worked, which included bahu pe atyavchaar, there were takers as well so people were making just that for TRP."

He further added, "On TV, a lot of irritating things would happen, like MBAs calling the shots on stories. They would say, ‘Make only these kinds of episodes for rating, as per our internal research. They really made a fool out of many by saying this was ‘internal research' and asking for a ‘maha episode', which would be of one hour. After a point, I fought with them and said I won't do it."

The '12th Fail' actor also added that he felt underutilized and said, "I thought I could do a lot more, but they are not able to utilize me. My contract in Balika Vadhu was just for two months, it was a cameo. But people loved it so much it went on for two years. I did it for that long because I believed in the content I was doing. But after that maza nahi aaya kuch shows mein."