Chintan Rachchh made his acting debut in the highly acclaimed web series Class. Directed by Ashim Ahluwalia, it began streaming from February 3 on an OTT platform. The Free Press Journal caught up with the actor for an exclusive chat.
While most of the actors take the conventional route, Chintan opted to play a homosexual character in Class. When asked where he got that push, he shares, “If you see in a technical sense, the most conventional route is to be unconventional. I don’t know about being an actor in this industry but I surely consider myself as an artiste. So, if someone is fearful about doing a character, that’s where my spidey sense would go first and apart from that it’s a pretty interesting role. It’s comparatively easy to project and throw lines but to internalise a character takes a lot of energy, time and work. It specifically asked something of me, except for me just being present on set and reading out lines, that’s why I went on with doing this character.”
Talking further on his challenges to do an on-screen kiss, he tells, “Kissing off-screen also is pretty challenging for me, I am a shy guy. But when a project like this is involved, whatever you do on set, you consider it as a part of your work and I never felt that 40 people on set were watching me kissing someone. I was alright with that for some reason. The part which actually made me conscious wasn’t kissing, it was actually smoking. Firstly, I never smoked a cigarette before this show and now I had to be a character who smokes in every alternate scene.”
Elaborating further about his apprehensions to make love with his male co-actor, he gushes, “Chayan (Chopra) is pretty sweet. In fact, we used to take it very lightly. We never had a conversation about this and we just went with it. The only time we realised that we are actually kissing would be in the workshops. We had an intimacy test and that was the first time we kissed too. That’s the only time we thought of it, that too not very deeply.”
The show boasts of an ensemble cast. When probed whether he had any fears of being missed or was he confident enough to shine out, he explains, “I was in a dilemma for two reasons. Firstly, because it was an ensemble and my screen time in comparison to different characters was less. Secondly, I was literally the youngest guy on set. Somewhere I think I had that perfection syndrome too which made me feel I am not giving my 100 per cent every morning like a typical engineering student.”
In the future, Chintan wants to do roles that require similar amount of energy and time as Class, “I am looking for something that again asks for my energy and involvement and not just time, ideally what I did in Class but eventually I will end up doing whatever I feel like doing,” he reveals.
