Vedang Raina opened up on how he put himself in a self-imposed solitary confinement for as long as eight hours for an emotionally challenging scene. The actor admitted that shooting for this film took a toil on his mental health.
Vedang Raina made his acting debut last year with Zoya Akhtar’s teen musical comedy, The Archies. His second film, Vasan Bala’s Jigra alongside Alia Bhatt is up next for release this month. The young actor essays the role of Alia’s brother in this action thriller.
Recently in an interview with Man’s World, Vedang got candid about his experience of working on this film. He admitted that it was challenging for him to essay the role of a prisoner who is locked up in a different country. He said that since he had no idea how that experience is like, it was scary and intimidating for him to approach his role as an actor. Vedang revealed that he also had to perform some hard-hitting scenes, and also added that this was the first time where he had to cry in front of the camera.
The actor said that the most challenging bit for him was to shave his head, multiple times, over the course of a year.
“More so, because the hair, the swirl, was a big part of playing Reggie, and I was the only guy on that set whose hair would take so much time to get done. And here for Jigra, there was nothing to be done hair and makeup wise once I landed at the set—I was wearing this one pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and chappals and I was ready to face the camera. It was nice, but I missed my hair,” he was quoted as saying.
Vedang said that while it wasn’t easy for him to get into the skin of his character, it wasn’t easy for him to get out of it either. On the other hand, his co-star Alia Bhatt would be in the scene, hit all the right notes with precision and get out of the character when she heard ‘cut’.
“It did impact my mental health a bit. On the very first day, I was to shoot a rather emotionally intense scene, and I shut myself in my vanity, put the lights off, switched off my phone, and told people to just leave me 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 recalled.
Vedang told the publication that he would remain in that zone for two-three hours even after wrapping his scenes.
He admitted, “I realised that it is not going to work like this, and after that I have decided not to put myself through such a thing… it is not worth it and I believe there are other ways to access that emotion, I just need to find which one works for me the best.”
While he was reluctant to call himself a ‘method actor’, he elaborated a bit on his acting process.
Vedang shared, “When doing a scene, I like to put myself in that headspace for 2/3 hours before facing the camera, and I take some time to get out of the character as well. I am not saying there can be no other way to do justice to a character and be truthful in a performance, but that’s the approach I have been taking, maybe it is also because of my inexperience. So, if I am playing a character with a limp, I will probably hit my leg and hurt myself to get that limp. It is stupid. But I don’t know any other way yet.”
Jigra is slated to arrive in cinema halls on October 11.
