Romancing in the city,TV actor Karan Mehra gets his DDLJ moment

Actor Karan Mehra speaks about his recent visit to town, Delhi days, and future plans.

We all have those moments where we have wanted to enact a scene from a Bollywood film. For TV actor Karan Mehra, it was during his recent visit to Sohna (Haryana), where he and his wife, actor Nisha Rawal, posed as Raj and Simran from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ, 1995). He captioned the image on Instagram: “When you can’t keep calm & go all out on the Sarson-Ke-Khet (sic).”

TV actor Karan Mehra, on his recent visit to town, spoke about the evolution of TV shows, and how he’s looking forward to change his TV persona with a negative character.

The visit wasn’t all filmi vibes; in fact, shopping and partying in the millennium city occupied most of their time. “We were in Gurugram for someone’s birthday. We were passing by sarson ke khet and thought maybe we could shoot something like that. It was a good change; just the two of us away from Mumbai in cold weather.”

 

The actor may have spent more than half of his life in Mumbai, but he still cherishes the time spent in the Capital when he was pursuing fashion. “I would travel everyday from Noida to Delhi and was a studious guy. I even topped my batch and won awards. It used to be very different then as few guys would get into fashion design. We hardly had time to really hang out. Kabhi kulche wale ke pass chale jaate the jo college ke saamne baiththa tha,” he shares, adding “I keep meeting my friends back from college and school.”

From being a fashion student, styling actors, working behind the camera, and assisting directors such as Rajkumar Hirani, Ram Gopal Verma early in his career to playing a memorable character on TV, Mehra says he likes to “go with the flow”. “I never thought I’ll be an actor. I always thought I’d be a model, and do ramp shows and ads. Acting just happened as a package. It (assisting the directors) helped me understand the craft of being an actor, what all goes into it. And finally, I got the opportunity to play Naitik (in a TV show) which created its own history. I’ve been doing theatre for a year now,” the actor reveals.

His son, travelling, and his love for theatre has been keeping him busy, but he is open to new things. Asked about his future plans, he says, “I am open to doing web shows and I want to experiment as well. I’ve been approached for negative roles, too. It’s quite interesting and something like that would change my image.”

What does he think of the evolution of Indian TV shows? “Things have shifted too much towards supernatural. It’s too scary to sleep with those thoughts. I don’t know what TV has got into; there used to be such nice things that people could watch. I don’t know if (this is because) audience’s tastes have changed. I don’t know if I’ll be in a supernatural show. I am not much of a fan of the genre, the way we make it. But how Hollywood does it is really great,” he says, adding that he is looking for interesting stories.

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