Seasoned Star
From a confused schoolboy Mazhar to lovable KD and now the brash Angad, Purab Kohli has mastered the art of reinvention. A quick chat.
Describe yourself in three words.
I would like to think of myself as creative, responsible and hardworking.
What’s keeping you busy these days?
Constantly dealing with jet lag. I have been travelling back and forth from London in the past two months. As a family, we shifted base to London in September and I am shooting in India for a web-series called Typewriter, directed by Sujoy Ghosh for Netflix.
Hip Hip Hurray completed 20 years in 2018. How do you reflect on your career and the industry from then to now?
My career has definitely had an interesting graph in 20 years. I have indulged in various things from acting on TV, films and the web to hosting different kinds of shows on TV. I say indulged because I have often weighed how much fun I will have doing a project over how good or bad it is for my career. The industry has come a long, long way. I started my career doing a weekly show, and today I am shooting series that release eight to ten one hour episodes in one evening! We are flooded with content.
Angad Shergil from Its Not That Simple is unlike any character you have played. How well do you relate to him?
Angad is a great character. His ideologies and ethics are very attractive. He is blatantly brash and almost snobbish about it. I really enjoyed playing the part and feel there is a lot to learn from Angad, especially on how he treats men and women truly as equals. I particularly enjoyed his impatience when he cuts through other people’s crap.
What has been the most challenging role for you?
Every role comes with its own challenges and that’s what I look for in every character I play. I ask myself how I can push myself to feel new emotions from the point of view of the character I am playing. Often, I have had to shed a previous character I have played and it can be very annoying when a KD jumps into Angad’s shoes.
If you could work with any person living or dead, who would you choose and why?
On the top of my head, Jenifer Lawrence in a David O Russel film. If you have seen any of their work, you would not ask why.
Complete the sentence: Digital content is here to stay but films…will never seize to fascinate.
A millennial trend that you don’t understand or like.
#PoutingSelfies
Your fitness routine includes..
45 minutes of training daily. I do a range of things from yoga, swimming, running, to free hand functional training and sometimes weight training.
What’s on your to-do list for 2019?
I have been shooting web series back to back. I want to shoot a film in 2019.
From the February 2019 issue of FHM India.
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