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By Our Correspondent ©2003 Bollyvista.com |
The effect created by the umpteen number of TV channels is clearly visible on Bollywood's film industry. Every day, new talented actors, directors, editors, writers are coming up from television and several film actors, who were either not successful in movies, or who left the film industry are now concentrating more on Television, a media with a much broader audience base. However, this Bollyvista.com's feature article is not about a known film actor, settling in the Television industry, rather its about a young, talented actor who started his journey as an anchorman for Walt-Disney moving on to successful TV serials and commercials. He became somewhat of a household name during his last seven years in television, known amongst kids for his friendly and fun anchoring on the Walt-Disney shows. Today, after seven years in the television industry, Vishal Malhotra is moving on to a different level, a whole new orbit. His first feature film, Ishq Vishk will be released on Friday the 9th May nationwide in India.
Bollyvista.com met up with Vishal in his Pali Hill (Mumbai) residence. A very down to earth guy who hasn't let the success of his television career effect him at all, he started answering our questions with a charming smile and intelligent answers. Read on to know more about Vishal and his journey.
Bollyvista.com: How did your journey in the television industry started?
Vishal: Well, I started off with Walt Disney in India. It was about 7 years ago and this might sound cliché but it all started off by chance. Actually I got a call for somebody else's number, it was for a friend of mine and it was for an audition for Disney. My friend insisted that I come along with him for company, so I went along with him. The person doing the auditions out there thought I would fit into the bill so he asked me to give a screen-test as well. Without any hang-ups about anything or any ideas, I just went and gave it something totally out of my heart, something just for the fun of it because my mind was set to go to the States and follow my friends. You know when you are at that age, you just want to follow your friends and all of them were going to the States for Computer Science and various things. I also wanted to follow them so I had given my board exams and had done my SATs and everything. In any case, I did the audition and forgot all about it. About three months later, my sister Pooja picked up a phone call from Hong Kong while I was in the shower and she called me and said, "Vishal there is a call for you from Hongkong". I said, Ok, and you know, for someone who doesn't know heads or tails about television programming or television business or anything of media, they still called me and asked me if I would be interested in doing their show. They decided to give me 4000 Rs/- a week.
He continues with a small laughter - At that time, I was getting 4000 Rs/- a month in pocket money and I thought it would be great! I would be able to pay for my own ticket to go to the states and take care of everything. So one thing led to another and that's how I started in this media with a show called "Disney Club". It was a show which Disney channels have all throughout the world. That was a great experience.
Bollyvista.com: So that was your first show?
Vishal: Yes, that became my first show and like I said, it was for Walt-Disney. "Disney Club" stopped about 3 years ago. But a year before that, Disney had introduced two other shows, one of them was "Disney Hour" and being the face of Walt-Disney in India, they had asked me for it and that's the show I'm doing right now as well.
Bollyvista.com: Walt-Disney gave you an award as well?
Vishal: Yeah, what happened was in summer 1999, the International Disney Community actually saw what I was all about. They came down to India and didn't tell me anything about it. They kept me under observation for about 3 months and they back tracked my shows for about a year and finally they awarded me the best person in the world for Walt-Disney and that's when I went to Orlando as well.
Despite the experience I gained from doing the Disney Hour, the thing about the show is that it wasn't really acting, it's more like anchoring and still is anchoring. And I guess I have become kind of a brand with Disney and with Kids. Obviously anybody who does a show for about 7 years becomes connected to that show in the audiences' minds and I must have about 10000 episodes behind me of only Disney show. That's what created the buzz. And all this happened when the television industry hadn't really boomed in this country as it has now. So I got onto it when it was just about teething and luckily for me, I was riding a wave.
Bollyvista.com: Can you tell us more about your TV serials, namely "Hip Hip Hurray"?
Vishal: Well, while I was doing the Disney shows, I got my first television serial, it was a show called "Hip Hip Hurray". It was based on the life of a few kids in school and college. It ran on Zee TV. The show was an instant hit. Now you have a trend today in the industry of movies featuring youngsters, college crowds. This is more so after such films as "Dil Chahta Hai". So you can rate by the success of "Hip Hip Hurray" how hungry people were for the "young", to see "youth". Once again I have been really lucky because I have been associated with the right things in the beginning of my career, when I didn't know right from wrong, I was put onto the right track and "Hip Hip Hurray" was the right thing for me. It was a youth based show which touched on all youth based issues in India, could be drugs, could be as trivial as cheating in exams, drinking, smoking, driving, you know the basic youth issues.
My character was of a Christian kid called John Koylo and the great thing about the show was that the writer of the show, what he did was very unlike what Indian shows normally do. He did a workshop for about three weeks after finalizing all the characters, so that we can get to know the character better and he could write around the actor's characters, rather than making the actor fit in the characters role. So what happened was that John, my character, was very much Vishal. There were traits in him that were good and bad and were coming straight from my own personality. It kind of helped me to slip into that mode of acting because I wasn't actually acting, I was being myself. And as the show started becoming more mature, I slowly slipped into the acting mode. The show ran for about 90 weeks even though it was only given a slot for 30 weeks, so it got three times its given slots. We wanted to extend it but we made a collective decision to end the show on a high note.
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