‘TV production can wait’

Actor Manoj Bajpayee admits that he was approached by a soon-to-be-launched TV channel to produce a show. But, his schedule is so hectic that he doesn’t have the time.

Manoj Bajpayee would love to be a filmmaker, but that dream will have to wait.

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Actor Manoj Bajpayee admits that he was approached by a soon-to-be-launched TV channel to produce a show. But, his schedule is so hectic that he doesn’t have the time.

“I’d like to bring a fiction series featuring some of our greatest novels to TV but I’ll wait till I can give it a 100 per cent. I don’t think I will act in it, my movies keep me busy,” says the actor who is thrilled with the response to his plumpish, innocent look in Dus Tola and is looking forward to the cross-country promotional tour for the film. He put on 10 kgs for the role of the goldsmith and then had to go on a salad diet and hit the gym with a vengeance to lose it all in three months for Anurag Kashyap’s mafia thriller set in the coal mines of Dhanbad.

Isn’t he playing a Godfather-like don in that one? “It’s a fantastic character but he’s no ‘desi Brando’. The film is in two parts but my role finishes in Part One,” he says. There’s also Aarakshan with Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgn. “Mr Jha (director Prakash Jha) will give us a narration in a month’s time but from the briefing, it seems an exciting project for which we will return to Bhopal.”