After spending around a decade balancing acting with running Casting Bay, actor Abhishek Banerjee has decided to retire. Only from the casting duties, that is.
In an Instagram post on Monday, the announcement made it clear. Talking to HT City, he says the decision was “difficult”. Abhishek and Anmol Ahuja had started the company together a decade back.
“I think it was any which way very difficult for me to handle any kind of company work and administrative work because of my shooting schedules,” he says. Casting, he adds, is not something he believes can be done remotely, “I don't believe in doing casting without being in the casting rooms. So for me that was very important.”
Banerjee felt he was no longer able to give the company his best, which prompted him to part ways. It is a complete separation from Casting Bay, he confirms, “I thought if I am not able to give hundred percent in something, then what's the whole point of doing it? It's better to let the youngsters take over and let them do the job.”
{{/usCountry}}Banerjee felt he was no longer able to give the company his best, which prompted him to part ways. It is a complete separation from Casting Bay, he confirms, “I thought if I am not able to give hundred percent in something, then what's the whole point of doing it? It's better to let the youngsters take over and let them do the job.”
{{/usCountry}}The decision also came with a concern: the conflict between his two professional identities. Banerjee says he felt it was important to draw a line between his work as an actor and his work as a casting director. “Because I am an actor and then a casting director. These questions have been raised since I became an actor,” he says. While he points out that there were “hardly any projects” where his acting and casting duties coincided, he felt it was better to remove the ambiguity. “But still I felt that let's avoid the conflict of interest," he adds.
Banerjee makes it clear that leaving Casting Bay does not mean abandoning casting altogether. “I'm not saying that I won't do anything in casting. Maybe in the future I'll be planning something, but not as a casting director for sure,” he says. Instead, he wants to help make the profession “a more organized platform, a more democratic platform” and remain available to the casting fraternity.
Banerjee's acting career started with small roles but soon expanded to Go Goa Gone, Stree, Dream Girl and its sequel. On OTT too, he has been part of acclaimed projects including Mirzapur, Paatal Lok and The Family Man. Mirzapur The Movie will be his immediate next.
“I want to put more focus on other stuff, and offline. I want to write, I want to produce. So I want to focus there. Hence this was my next step. It's just like sometimes you have to move on from some place to reach somewhere else," Abhishek ends.