‘Casting direction should be compulsory for actors’
Dream Girl actor Abhishek Banerjee, who is also a casting director, says there is a lot to learn in a casting room and so, actors should compulsorily undergo a casting internship.
An alumnus of Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College, Abhishek arrived in Mumbai over a decade ago with the dream of becoming an actor. Facing rejections early on, he became a casting director.
“As a casting assistant, I always wanted to sharpen my acting skills. In the casting room, you get to interact with actors and read different scripts. There are different characters like that of a villain, brother, mother, father and child. You get to do these characters with others again and again. All this brings sharpness to acting. I think it (the casting room) is like a school for me,” says Abhishek, who starred in the 2018 horror-comedy Stree.
Such was the influence that the stint had on him that he now feels that casting should be a part of actors’ formal training. “You should understand once what happens. It’s same as the filmmaking process. There are scenes... some people do it well and some don’t,” adds Abhishek, whose casting credits include The Dirty Picture (2012), Toilet - Ek Prem Katha (2017) and this year’s Luka Chuppi.
He says there was a huge difference between the casting process when he started out and now. “I came here (Mumbai) to be an actor, when I saw the crowd in front of audition rooms. There were a lot of not-so-capable people who were casting at that time. Also, it was like if you know someone, you will get work or if you pursue someone, you will get work,” shares the actor, however, adding, that auditions have become fairer now, and the process is much better.
“There used to be no co-actors in the casting room. It would be very difficult to act with guys who couldn’t act. If the person in front of you reads lines like a poem, delivering dialogues is difficult. Now, there is an actor in the audition room, and proper performances happen,” he says.