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Sumeet Vyas on working with Parineeti Chopra on her debut web series: She surprised me pleasantly
Sumeet Vyas talks about collaborating with Parineeti Chopra on the latter's debut web series and how he keeps the actor and director in him separate
After turning director last year with the web series Raat Jawan Hai, Sumeet Vyas returned to acting on web with his recent film Detective Sherdil. He has an exciting line up ahead as well which includes teaming up with actor Parineeti Chopra in her debut OTT series, and he is quite excited about it.
All praise for his co-star, Sumeet Vyas says, “She’s very intuitive as an actor and very easy to work with. There is no fuss and only good things about her, and it’s not because I am part of the show, but genuinely.” Sumeet adds that Parineeti actually surprised her. “When you hear about stars and popular people, you have these preconceived notions and you’ve read things about them, but when I met her, I was so pleasantly surprised. She was always ready with her lines, and completely prepared. She’s always contributing to the scene and thinking what else she can do with it. She surrenders to the director and it makes it so easy to work with her,” he says
Reflecting on his experience of working on the show which they shot in Shimla earlier this year, Sumeet shares, “It was lovely and Rensil (D’Silva) is such a senior writer-director himself, so it was also a great learning ground. In the last few years, I’ve only been working on sets and just observing how different directors go about shooting and working on a material. It’s free training for me,” he quips.
As an actor-turned-director, Sumeet opens up on his biggest challenge. “The battle was to make people believe that I am not vain, because that is the first preconceived notion that people have about actors. That they’re probably unintelligent beings and they’re only concerned about how they look. But historically if you see, actors have made great directors in the west, as well as here. Guru Dutt, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor are some prime examples of it,” he insists.
But after directing, is he able to keep the actor and director in him separate? “I don’t meddle with things, because I also feel that if I was directing, I wouldn’t like somebody to intrude in my line of work. As long as there is enough material for me to get excited about in the script and as long as I like the director, I do it and then I don’t question too much. I surrender to what the director wants to do, now more so after directing, because now I realise how hard it is. There are so many things that a director has to take care of on a set. I don’t want to be one more hurdle in their work. I want to be the easy part in their day,” he laughs.
