In the much-awaited horror comedy Stree 2, Abhishek Banerjee reprised his role as the naïve Jana. In the action thriller Vedaa, he plays Jitendar Pratap Singh, a menacing antagonist who is hell-bent on causing havoc based on his casteist outlook. Having two films of such diverse genres released on the same day is as exciting as it is anxiety-inducing, but Banerjee would not have it any other way. “It is easy to typecast an actor and I have always tried to run away from that,” he says.Although Banerjee always thought playing dramatic or intense characters was his forte, he was pleasantly surprised when director Amar Kaushik approached him for the role of Jana in Stree.“Even my friends didn’t think I had a good sense of humour,” he laughs. Kaushik brought out the innocence of the character in ways Banerjee could not have imagined. “I was really stressed while shooting for Stree because I didn’t know if it would work out,” he says.When the film became a hit, he was finally convinced he could play lighter roles and went on to play comic characters in Dream Girl and Bala. Again, when he was on the verge of being typecast, he switched gears and did intense shows such as Paatal Lok and Mirzapur.With Stree 2 and Vedaa, Banerjee has proved yet again that he is in fact a versatile actor. Although Jana was a returning character in the sequel, the audience kept getting glimpses of him in Bhediya and Munjya.“I feel there is a bit of Jana in me. I was a sweet and innocent child, oblivious to the world. So, it was easy to reprise the role,” he states. As far as Jitendar of Vedaa is concerned, the actor says that he had to play the character with the belief that he is not the villain. “Hooligans don’t think they are doing anything wrong. In their eyes, they are the heroes. Only that kind of thinking would make a character like Jitendar succeed,” he adds.Is there something he would really want to try his hand at? “I know it might sound cliché, but I really want to be part of a good romantic film, and by that I don’t mean the song and dance routine but something along the lines of Vijay Sethupathi’s 96. I want to do a film which does not glorify love, but is just about the simple, honest emotion,” he smiles.
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