Last month, the OTT medium gave
one of the most successful web shows of the Indian industry, Yeh Kaali Kaali
Ankhein. The thriller featuring Tahir Raj Bhasin, Shweta Tripathi Sharma and
Anchal Singh became a part of every person’s watch list, but there was one more
character that won the hearts of everyone across the nation and became a part
of household conversations. That character is Golden. And the actor who played
that part, Anantvijay Joshi, is over the moon by the love that he has been
receiving for it.
Golden is shown as a very rustic
guy in the show, but Anantvijay himself isn’t much like that. While the makers
had a clear idea on who Golden is, the actor just followed that brief and made
it his own. Thus, a lot of effort went into becoming Golden for Anantvijay,
which included getting the dialect right. “Since Anantvijay and Golden have
very different backgrounds, it was very important for me to make sure that this
difference is visible in their way of speaking. If you watch the show, Golden
is a school dropout, which is why he doesn’t speak the way Vikrant or other
people around him do. He is unpolished in the way he speaks and is a chatty
guy, and one thing that I have observed in chatty people is that they don’t
have any filter. Hence, Golden speaks with no filter and keeps on creating
conversation as it goes,” he asserts.
Anantvijay shares that the
character of Golden was written as a very fun character and the whole idea
behind it was to have fun with it. And even the actor tried to do that by not
taking himself and the character very seriously. As for to prepare for his way
of speaking, he took the help of regional music and observed people from
different regions. “I find it very fascinating that every language has its own
metres. So, I keenly paid attention to the way people speak in different
languages and accents. Even in Hindi, the way people from different regions
speak the language is very diverse and that’s what I was trying to grasp. I was
hanging out with a lot of my friends from UP and Bihar because there is a very
interesting charm that their enunciation has, apart from an intrinsic sense of
humour. Their rhythm is very different and getting that right was very
important for me,” he shares.
Ananvijay insists that he didn’t
base Golden from any particular region of India because the show is set in a
fictional town, Onkara, and no one knows where it actually is. “So, I resorted
to getting an accent which was mix of many different Hindi dialects, ranging
from Allahabadi to Bundelkhandi. It was actually a cocktail of whatever I could
get my hands on. Above all, the idea was to own it and make it very
free-flowing and distinct,” he informs, adding that regional films came to his
aid in that prep. “I feel regional films are amazing representation of their
culture. The characters are so unique and their mannerisms so individualistic,
and that kind of rubbed off on me.”
It wasn’t just the speaking part
but also the appearance that Anantvijay wanted to root in reality, thus he also
put a lot of thinking and effort into it. “If you would observe, we Indians
have a very different kind of body type. We are not the six-pack generation,
it’s just a whole new fad that has come up. But traditionally, if you go to
remote places, they have these lanky kids with a little pot belly. So, I
purposefully tried to keep my pelvis out in the show so that it appears that I
have a belly. It helped me keep it close to the rustic setting we were trying
to create through Onkara,” he avers.
The actor has a very interesting
anecdote regarding his look that eventually led to a big change in the original
setting that has now become iconic. “My make up team and I decided that we
needed to tone my skin down as in big cities we get much less exposure to the
sun, but in smaller cities a guy like Golden would be hanging out a lot. We
also tried to go for a funky hair colour because Golden runs a C grade film
salon, so he must be inspired by some of the characters in them. On that
particular day, when we were trying it, the golden colour was the only one
available at that time with my team and we used it. The character was
originally named Vinod, but when I went to the director Siddharth Sengupta with
my golden haired look, he started laughing and said that we must call the
character Golden from now. So, I’ll say it was for good that the name was
changed,” Anantvijay smiles.
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