Lakshya recalls when Dostana 2, Bedadhak were shelved; didn’t sign another show despite being paid Rs 20-25,000 per day: ‘Who do I blame, Karan Johar?’

Lakshya, who has now made his presence felt with Kill and The Ba***ds of Bollywood, faced five years of setbacks when two of his Dharma Productions films got shelved.

By: Entertainment Desk

Mumbai | Updated: October 20, 2025 05:11 AM IST

3 min read

Lakshya was last seen in The Ba***ds of Bollywood.

Lakshya has made his presence felt in the Hindi film industry after the success of his debut film last year, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s extreme violence thriller Kill, and his debut streaming show, Aryan Khan’s directorial debut The Ba***ds of Bollywood on Netflix India this year. But he saw a five-year period of setbacks right before these two projects, even after being a successful television actor.

After headlining the historical show Porus on Sony Entertainment Television till 2018, Lakshya auditioned for months before he was offered a three-film deal by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. However, that deal didn’t safeguard his films as two of them got shelved months after going on floors. One was the romantic drama Bedhadak opposite fellow debutant Shanaya Kapoor, and the other was Collin D’Cunha’s romantic comedy Dostana 2, also starring Kartik Aaryan and Janhvi Kapoor.

“I just told myself it’s not your fault. Your job is to wake up in the morning, do voice training, read your scenes, go the gym, watch movies, and keep doing what you have been. Don’t change your routine,” Lakshya recalled on Raj Shamani’s podcast.

“I was blank. I was numb to it. I just let it happen. Luckily, I never had self-doubt. I genuinely felt nothing was set up for me. I had no plans of becoming an actor. I just happened to become one. The only thing I knew was hard work. So why should I stop doing that? That’s what’s made me. Who do I blame? God? or Karan Johar? I can’t blame anyone na. The film got shelved, and that’s it. For some reason, I had the self-belief that it was happening for a reason. Tables would turn one day. There wasn’t a single day throughout Covid when I didn’t work hard,” he added.

He never considered calling up his father, who is based out of Delhi, then because he’d get scared. “After Porus ended, I got another TV show where they offered me Rs 20,000-25,000 per day. My father said, ‘That’s a lot of money. I’ve never seen that kind of money in my whole life. Just grab it.’ But there was a stubbornness within me. Why could I not become a movie star? What do I lack? This one’s doing it, that one’s doing it, so why could I not?,” Lakshya recalled.

Also Read — The Ba***ds of Bollywood: Aryan Khan’s debut show lacks a ‘lakshya’

Lakshya felt he’d hit a saturation point as far as TV was concerned. “I’d done everything in that show. I’d done the whole range of an actor’s emotions. The quality in TV was also decreasing. Porus also got derailed from its track. The medium is like that. A good film takes over two years to write. But you have to come up with something in television every day. That’s why the shows become cringe after a point,” Lakshya argued.

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