Sulagna Panigrahi will do TV only if she’s unable to pay her rent?
Mention Sulagna Panigrahi, and one is instantly reminded of Dhara Dixit from Amber Dhara, the TV show about conjoined twins. After it went off air, the actor did two more TV shows. But then, according to Sulagna, mediocre offers from the small screen made her shift her focus to films.
She went on to do a few Hindi, Marathi and Tamil films, but was seen in the Ajay Devgn starrer Raid last year. However, since then, the actor has not taken up any other acting projects. What happened?
“Well, I did not get anything (film offers) worthy enough to be a part of, except for small videos and advertisements. And doing something for the sake of it makes no sense because that will damage the little credibility that I have earned over the years. I realised that when a film
I started shooting ended abruptly, another never took off,” she says.
Her last TV show Bidaai went off air in 2010. Why not go back to TV, the platform that got her popularity? “I’ve been there and done that, so I know. But after having done good shows, I could not settle for anything and everything. Also, longrunning shows aren’t what I’m looking at. I would rather do ads, short videos… If I’m not being able to pay my next month’s rent, then I might do TV. Jokes apart, I do a lot of ads and that pays my bills,” she adds.
There are times when having few opportunities hit Sulagna so hard that she would break down. “During those times, my sister who visits me often, would tell me, ‘You are here to become a good actor, and we always knew that would not be easy. So don’t change your focus, move ahead, we’re with you’,” she shares, adding that such words of support encourage her to keep trying harder.