Vishal Vashishtha: Focusing on OTT has been fruitful

He comes across as a shy and introverted person but focus the camera on him and Vishal Vashishtha can surprise you with his with his uninhibited performance Over the past year he has gone missing from the small screen and is concentrating on digital entertainment and movies The shift of attention doesnrsquot surprise us because the actor is made for bigger things After his last OTT release Ghar Waapsi Vashishtha is back with another series Hustlers Jugaad Ka Khel In conversation with midday he talks about his latest Amazon miniTV show working with director Harsh Dedhia and moreEdited excerpts from the interviewAfter being under the radar for a year you forayed into OTT with Ghar Waapsi Has the shift to OTT benefited youGhar Waapsi did wonders for me After seeing the show creators started noticing me and that is how I got my first film Then I got a big web series and a short film Over the past one year I was shooting these projects and now they are all coming out one after the other So the wait has been long but focusing on OTT has been fruitfulWhile most actors arenrsquot restricted to one medium have you decided to concentrate only on streamingAs of now I am concentrating on OTT and films TV launched me and that will be close to my heart forever However Irsquove done whatever I could do on television Irsquove outgrown the kind of roles I was getting In the future if something completely out of the world comes my way I would love to give it a shotHad you seen any of director Harsh Dedhiarsquos work beforeI liked Broken but Beautiful A friend had recommended the show to me and said Vikrant Massey starred in it He told me that this is the kind of show I should be doing I came to know that Harsh directed the series when we were shooting for Hustlers He has also directed Never Kiss Your Best Friend but I am yet to see itHow was it to work with DedhiaAlthough I knew the projects he had done I did not have any preconceived notion or expectation from him His patience is remarkable The best part about him is that for any complicated scene he simplifies it and makes you understand Instead of going through all the philosophies of life and making it more complicated he simplifies the core of the scene Then it becomes easy for actors to deliver the sceneDo you feel burdened when a show rests on your shouldersI havenrsquot felt burdened The only burden I feel while shooting is that I have to deliver Right now before the showrsquos release I have butterflies in my stomach But gauging success and failure is easier said than done The feeling of being a part of something much bigger than yourself is great On Hustlers we are a close knit cast and crew We are grateful to have come together and made something good we worked hard on this for the past two to three months If it fails we will discuss what went wrong but the burden of success is never on one personWhat is your philosophy to successThe philosophy keeps changing as and when success comes to you When I started out in television success was about keeping myself busy and earning money to sustain myself and my family But your want becomes something else when your work becomes your passion When I shifted to OTT and films doing good content became my priority It took me a good one year to finally find a project and start shooting it Now success to me is to do good projects and have a great lifestyle which is sustainable in the long runWhatrsquos nextI have two projects slated to release Showtime and a film called The Diplomat Irsquom starting another project in March which is another biggie in my life