Vedang Raina, who made his acting debut with Zoya Akhtar's The Archies, is currently gearing up for the release of his upcoming movie, Jigra, starring Alia Bhatt in the lead. He recently revealed that immersing himself in such a complex character was challenging and took a toll on his mental health.
Raina said that it wasn’t easy for him to 'come in and out of character' like Alia while working on Jigra. In an interview with Mansworld, he revealed that on the first day of shooting, which involved an emotional intense scene, he isolated himself in his vanity, put the lights off, turned his phone off, and asked people to leave him alone.
"I sat there listening to my music. Now, as luck would have it, the shot was supposed to happen at 3pm but got delayed and we started rolling around 8 pm. So, I was in that self-imposed solitary confinement for about 8 long hours, and it really started impacting me," he stated.
Vedang stated that even when his scenes were finished, he could not get out of that zone for 2/3 hours and that is when he realised that things can't work this way, leading him to decide never to put himself through such an experience again, as he felt it wasn't worth it.
"I believe there are other ways to access that emotion, I just need to find which one works for me the best," added the actor.
Talking about his character, Vedang said that it was challenging to play a prisoner, who gets locked up in a different country.
"I have no idea how that experience is like, and it was scary and intimidating to approach it as an actor. There were some pretty hard-hitting scenes. Also, this is the first time I had to cry in front of the camera. But the most challenging bit was that I had to shave my head, multiple times, over the course of one year," Raina concluded.