The Bullseye

With his turn in the web series Mirzapur, Vikrant Massey proves he’s got range.

- Nidhi Gupta

Vikrant Massey knew at the age of seven that he wanted to be a star. “Like every other Bombay boy, I was raised on all kinds of cinema,” he says, scratching at a day-old stubble. “I remember,” he laughs, “when Baazigar released, I was that weird kid who’d stuff a beetroot in his mouth and walk about screaming, ‘Madan Chopra aayega, sailaab aayega!’”

In Massey’s case, though, this wasn’t one of those passing childhood fantasies. It stuck, this manic fandom, because such was the zeitgeist in the Nineties. From the Terminator films, he learned how to be a hyper hero; he discovered the wonders of on-screen kissing with The Bold And The Beautiful. He imitated Govinda’s twerks and acquainted himself with Satyajit Ray’s plot twists. He wouldn’t go to film school, but eventually, he’d come to study the filmography of Naseeruddin Shah (Tamas, Mirza Ghalib) and Irrfan Khan (“I’ve watched Maqbool at least 40 times”).

But childhood dreams come first: “I just wanted to lead a prime-time TV soap and get rich and famous.