Maniesh Paul: Don’t know when we’ll be able to watch a film in a theatre or go on a vacation, people will be scared post Covid-19 too

The fear around the pandemic will continue for a long time to come, feels actor Maniesh Paul, and says everyone has to accept this change.

While everyone is waiting for the Covid-19 crisis to end and to a time when things to return to normalcy, the reality remains that it will indeed take some time. And actor Maniesh Paul believes that even when it does settle down eventually, we’ll have a very different world in front of us.

Actor Maniesh Paul is prepared to face the changes in the post Covid-19 world

“I feel people will still be scared, which is very normal. I don’t think we’re going to have big parties anytime soon, people will definitely make sure we have less crowds. I don’t know when the cinema halls will reopen, and we’ll just go and watch a film normally,” he continues, “Also when will be able to travel. It’s not going to be normal and will take time. It’s not like one lockdown is over and that’s it. There’ll be intervals of lockdown that might happen.”

Paul had been hosting a kids’ reality show before the lockdown came into effect. Explaining how different the last day of shoot was, he recalls, “We got to know that we had to stop shooting on March 16, and it was a very difficult day. Covid-19 had taken over, and we all were using sanitisers, it was not normal. We didn’t hug each other. We could sense it had started to affect us. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and when we can resume normal shoots. We can only pray to the Almighty.”

However, even if Paul can’t go out to shoot, work hasn’t stopped for him. He has been shooting for an online game show, and turned director, scriptwriter and everything to shoot from home. He reveals that his family is helping him.

“The portal had approached me saying they would fix a camera setup for me at my home, but I asked, ‘How would we do this in the lockdown?’ I shot some scenes on my phone, and they were very excited. I’m the host, and I’ve also done lighting for the first time. I don’t have multiple cameras, and one phone, so I shoot one line from one angle, then shift the phone to another place to do it,” he says.