Talented actor Rajesh Khera, who is the playing the antagonist in Colors’ whodunit show Dev has been around for years, but he accepts that the he is still not known by his name.
“People remember my popular and powerful characters i.e. Maddi (Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin), Major Bhargav (Left Right Left), Onida Devil TVC among others. This could be because I have also not got too much work, maybe I am expensive, too straight forward or there are not enough bald guy roles around. Some makers gave me wigs. But yes I will not do hair weaving.” His last role was a snake character in Naagarjuna – Ek Yoddha , “It was one of my best works,” says Rajesh.
Coming to Dev he says, “My unpredictable, abusive, wheel chair ridden novel writing character Mr Sahay is very insecure about his wife who turns out to be a look-alike of Dev ‘s (Ashish Chowdhry) deceased wife Mahek (Puja Banerjee). He starts imagining an affair between Dev and his wife and takes things to weird levels. There will be an interesting twist in the tail to my 20 shooting days cameo about which I have not been told yet. ”
Rajesh gives a lot of credit for his on screen quirks to his director/s, creative. “Minus these nuances the character would fall flat. In Dev, we have tried to stylize the otherwise staid wheel chair bound character by making him speak in loud or low voice or sometime using a cigar etc, we also needed to match the high graph set by Ashish (Chowdhry). To portray Sahay’s evilness was challenge for I am quite a decent guy in real life and neither have played such a character before hence it took me a few days to get hold of what I am doing on screen.”
Rajesh, who has earlier done lot of commendable work both on big (Hate Story 2 and Tango Charlie) and small screen (Tara, Swabhiman and Bhaskar Bharati etc) laments the current lack of content in the entertainment space. “Have we not seen major movies tanking and small flicks making money. Ditto with TV, Star took Barun Sobti who has a huge fan following, yet it shut shop in matter of months due to poor content.”
Ask about the web and he says, “This medium is still picking up.” He was part of Vikram Bhatt’s Spotlight. “I had a great character with few awesome scenes, full marks to director Suhail Tatari, who let me do my edgy stuff in this fictional biopic of a Bollywood starlet featuring Tridha Choudhury along with Sid Makkar. Hope for more such good work in time to come.”
All the best, Rajesh.