This story is from October 4, 2007

Now Nagesh is more of a friend:Shreyas

Manjari Sabharwal / TNN / Oct 4, 2007, 00:00 IST

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With three awards, numerous Marathi movies, and a lot of offbeat roles to his credit, Shreyas feels lady luck has been a little generous with him since he married Deepti three years back.

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ON A ROLL: Shreyas Talpade. (TOI Photo)More picsWe saw him as a deaf and dumb youngster aspiring to become a cricketer, then a behrupia donning a colourful pagri, a grim-looking psychiatrist, a college boy, and now as a junior artiste with none other than SRK!
Shreyas Talpade, who made his presence felt in Bollywood with his very first release Iqbal, is on a roll.
With three awards, numerous Marathi movies, and a lot of offbeat roles to his credit, Shreyas feels lady luck has been a little generous with him since he married Deepti three years back.
And quite interestingly, Deepti (Deepti Shreyas Talpade) who is a clinical psychologist, groomed her hubby for the role of a psychiatrist in Aggar. “Being an actor my schedule is usually very uncertain.

But Deepti is very cooperative in that sense. She even assisted me in giving a natural performance as a psychiatrist in Aggar,” says the lucky actor.
After a lot of Marathi plays, doing the role of a deaf and dumb youngster in Iqbal with seasoned actors like Naseeruddin Shah and Girish Karnad was quite a demanding task for Shreyas. “Certainly, there was a lot of pressure on me to perform well.
More so, since I had to work with actors like Naseer sahab and Girishji. But honestly speaking, they are such simple human beings and so cooperative actors that they never made me feel like a newcomer,” he shares.

Shreyas is excited about his forthcoming release with Shah Rukh Khan. “The name of my character is Pappu. Shah Rukh and I are playing the roles of junior artistes who struggle hard to make it big in Bollywood. Pappu knows his friend is deeply in love with Deepika – a huge film star, and wants to help at every opportunity. There are only five characters in the film – SRK, Deepika, Arjun Rampal, Kirron Kher and myself. I never expected that such a big project would come my way so soon.” He further adds, “I would thank Farah and Shah Rukh that they made me feel really comfortable. When Shah Rukh met me on the first day of shoot, he asked me what sweets I’d like for lunch. He pampered us like anything.”
First Iqbal, then Dor and now Bombay to Bangkok with Nagesh Kuknoor! “See, in the beginning, my relationship with Nagesh was that of a mentor and his student. But now he is more of a friend. He is well aware of my strengths and weaknesses but it doesn’t translate into my doing all his movies,” says Shreyas.
The actor it seems is in for game for playing offbeat characters since he had started working on MF Husain’s autobiography. Shreyas informs, “I had started working on Husainji’s autobiography but due to some reason the project has been put on hold. And I have no clue why. Apart from that I’m doing Kukunoor’s next, Bombay to Bangkok, then, there’s Rohit Shetty’s Golmaal 2, which is a multistarrer comedy. Then I have Shyam Banegal’s untitled film with Amrita Rao.”
Success in Bollywood hasn’t made Shreyas forget his roots and he has refused to bid adieu to Marathi cinema where he learn’t the basics of the art. He is also producing a Marathi film called Kande Pohe with Subhash Ghai. “I can never dissociate myself from Marathi cinema. It is my mentor.
I just completed Bayo, which is set in the period between 1940 and 1960. Actually, Subhashji wanted to know about the Marathi film market. I offered to put together a team for him and that’s when he offered me the production of the movie since acting was something I could not take time out for.”

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