Vikrant Massey says he worked for 110 hours non-stop during TV days: ‘Morning shifts melted into night shifts’

Following the success of 12th Fail, actor Vikrant Massey has been sweeping away all the awards, his recent feat — Most Promising Actor at Dadasaheb Phalke Awards where the film was honoured with the Best Film (Critics) award. For the Vidhu Vinod Chopra directorial, Vikrant is being showered with all the praises and getting media attention, but the actor doesn’t forget to talk about struggles as an artiste, especially during his initial days on TV. The actor, who started his career with Hindi television, opened up working  110 hours non-stop for a show.

While speaking with Unfiltered by Samdish, Vikrant, who worked on shows like Balika Vadhu, Dharam Veer, Baba Aisa Var Dhoondho etc, recalled television being a competitive space where actors had to work hectic, crazy hours to shoot and complete episodes. “Back in the day, artistes would shoot for 18-20 hours. There came a time when I had to shoot for 110 hours straight without stopping!” he recalled. Following a freak accident of a co-star, the writers reworked the script to use Vikrant as filler in every frame.

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“They had no choice but to use me as a filler. Day shifts were melting into night shifts. There was no sense of time. Funnily, when they finally packed up, it wasn’t even for me. An actor who came to the set at 10 am in the morning got upset and walked out  by evening,” Vikrant reminisced.  

The actor, who started his acting career on the small screen at the age of 17, and worked for over a decade, quit the medium when he had a Rs 35 lakh per month contract in hand. He wanted to do  “good work and find peace.” 

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Vikrant, who was loved as Shyam bhai in Balika Vadhu, revealed the original plan was to only do a cameo in the show, however, he ended up playing the character for over two years. “I did the show for two years only because the content was good but the thing with TV is that the content starts becoming repetitive after a while and that is when I decided to leave the show despite people loving my part,” the 36-year-old actor shared.