Pratik Gandhi - The Man of Characters

The Scam star, who will be next seen in Kunal Kemmu's debut directorial, Madgaon Express, has a chock-a-block slate that includes four more movies and a web series

- Ananya Ghosh

Pratik Gandhi, the prolific theatre actor, who had shifted to Mumbai in 2004, armed with an engineering degree and a few years of solid experience of doing Gujarati plays, with the twin aim of getting a job and doing theatre took the nation by storm with his Hansal Mehta act in the now iconic 2020 series Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story. Talking about his overnight stardom, the actor in a previous interview with this magazine had pointed out: "People often tell me that it's an overnight success. But if that is so, then my night must have lasted for 14 years, because it has taken me 14 years to reach this point. I feel extremely lucky that it took me so much time. It taught me, helped me evolve as an actor, and prepared me for this day." The series that owed much of its success to the acting prowess of Pratik not only catapulted him into the league of popular actors but also ensured he had no dearth of interesting projects. "After Scam, there was a lot of interest around me as an actor, and different kinds of scripts with some very exciting characters came my way. Being a greedy actor, I jumped at almost everything that piqued my interest. I was shooting over the past few years and now most of those are either ready or in the last stages of postproduction. However, apart from the two releases that are announced, I am not sure when those will come out," says the actor when we catch hold of him in between shots for a quick interview.

His first release of 2024 is Madgaon Express. Releasing on March 20 it is a madcap comedy that sees the actor in a very different avatar. "I play Pinku, a Gujarati boy from the suburbs with too many issues who keeps landing in the weirdest of situations.