Fourteen years after walking away from a secure job in Bengaluru to pursue acting, Nilay Mitash has finally landed his first lead role -- a carefree young man who begins with little ambition beyond enjoying life with friends in Hello! Hum Bol Rahe Hain. Beneath Pappu Prasad Pandey Pandey’s humour and ‘dialoguebaazi’ is someone who is still figuring things out. As the story progresses, he finds himself dealing with love, relationships, responsibilities and situations much bigger than anything he expected. What Mitash particularly enjoyed was the character’s vulnerability. One scene, where Pandey breaks down before his mother, particularly moved the actor. “We often grow up with this idea that a hero has to be strong, but why can’t a hero cry in front of his mother?” he asks.
The journey from an engineering graduate following a conventional career path to playing Pandey though, has involved years of uncertainty. After losing his mother, Mitash began questioning the conventional ideas of success and security he grew up with. “Until then, success was about earning well. After losing someone you love, your definition of security can change in ways you don’t expect,” he recalls.
A few months later, while still working at a multi-national company, he joined a theatre company in Bengaluru as a hobby. Playing different characters and researching their lives soon became something he eagerly looked forward to. It was the beginning of his relationship with acting, although leaving a stable career still felt like a task. The final push came during an ordinary journey to work that took an unexpected turn. Mitash was in an auto when it met with a serious accident. He escaped unhurt, but the incident changed his understanding of what taking a risk really meant. “I realised that life itself could change and I decided that I had to at least give acting a real shot,” he shares.
Looking back, he believes the decision had been building for some time. The years that followed were far from easy. The struggle revealed a side of himself he had not fully known before. “I realised that I’m far more persistent than I ever thought," he says, adding that surviving in the entertainment industry required more than being good at one’s craft.
During the period, he began writing, Though initially he did it to create opportunities for himself, today, he finds it difficult to separate the writer from the actor, with writing helping him understand characters more deeply. He has now completed two screenplays and is in discussions to bring them to life. A significant break came through Vayam, a 40-minute short film in which Mitash played 10 completely different characters. The film travelled to festivals and earned him Best Actor awards. More importantly, it brought him to the attention of director-writer duo Abhyaank and Anand, who went on to cast him as the lead in Hello! Hum Bol Rahe Hain. Now streaming on Waves OTT, the series also features Pratibha Tiwari, Sushmita Mukherjee, Yashpal Sharma and Ishtiyak Khan.
With the two screenplays completed and a few other projects in the works, Mitash concludes, "Hopefully, Pappu won’t be the last time you hear from me, or him for that matter."