Able, but hard to fight label

Anusha says she couldn’t crack B’wood as VJs would be boxed earlier; praises Ayushmann, Aditya for breaking the stereotype

Reuniting with one of your first directors can be nostalgic. Anusha Dandekar, who starred in Mahesh Manjrekar’s Viruddh (2005), says working on his yet-untitled Marathi film not only brought back memories, but also turned her into an acting student again. “He gives the script to actors on the day of the shoot. But he didn’t do that with me, because I had to practice [my lines]. I had a diction coach to ensure I was at a level that wasn’t disrespectful to my co-actors. If I do many takes, it’s disrespecting them,” she says.

After foraying into movies with Mumbai Matinee in 2003, Dandekar—then a leading VJ—was seen in a handful of films. She says that her short acting career had as much to do with her expectations as with the industry. “When you’re at the top of something, you don’t want to be at the bottom of something else. I was happy in my career as a VJ. At that time, if you chose something wrong, you would get [typecast] easily. Today, that old-school thought of boxing people has gone away, thanks to OTT. That said, it’s not like my phone was buzzing with offers [then], and I wasn’t excited about the ones I got.”

Today, Dandekar is happy to see that people enjoy the freedom to pursue different careers and mediums. “[Earlier], people would say that VJs didn’t make good actors. Have we not seen Ayushmann Khurrana rise as a phoenix? We also have Aditya Roy Kapur and Cyrus Sahukar.”

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