Lakshay Khurana expresses, ‘When you are judging people on the basis of how they look, it’s not done’!

A show on body-shaming is the need of the hour, says actor #LakshayKhurana, who is part of Nilanjana Purkayasstha and Herumb Khot’s show #Chikoo-YehIshqNachaye, based on the same topic. The actor, who plays the role of #Dhanush, says that it’s important to make shows on topics that people can relate to and learn from.

“I feel such content really works, People can relate to it as well and I think this will pass on a message that body-shaming not right. Body shaming has become so normal nowadays. People are calling anyone moti-mota, but this is not right. You are judging people on the basis of how they look and it’s not done. In our Indian culture, this is not acceptable. That’s the reason why this story really attracted me. Maybe, through this show, we can make a difference, we can pass on this message that we should stop judging people on the basis of how they look. We should actually be thinking about how intellectual is the person or how well behaved he is, about his values and other qualities. Body is not everything, how a person appears is not everything. People are following our shows and we can expect some change to happen,” he says.

The actor says that since the first season of the show did well, there is a certain pressure on the team to perform better. “There is always some kind of pressure when you join any show. It’s not only that the show has taken a leap, but there is a responsibility of any actor to make a project work. You need to put in extra effort, and when there is already a fan base, then creating a separate fan base for yourself can create pressure. But if you’re honest in your work or you get your character right, and if you’re connecting with your audience, then it is an easy task. So yes, there is a certain amount of pressure. But we all are putting an extra effort for the same and we’re trying our best to understand our characters. We sit with our creatives often to get better clarity on the same, the unit is really helping us out. The director himself is very clear with what exactly he wants,” he says.

Ask him if he relates to his character, and he says, “This character is very relatable, in every college, there is always this one person who is pretty popular. He is considered to be the hero of the college and I was one of those when I was in college. I was a good dancer and used to get all the attention. So, I pretty much relate to this. This character has a unique factor about him, like in college he is very different, he has this attitude, his style etc but when he is back home with his mom, he is totally the opposite. This character gives me a chance to showcase a lot of variation, and emotions and this whole thing really attracted me. This is what made this role challenging.”

Talking about working with Nilanjana and Herumb, he says, “I would like to thank Nilanjana ma’am and Herumb sir for trusting me with this role and I’m really grateful to them that they gave me this opportunity. It’s really good working with them. The other day they came on the set and they made us all very comfortable, discussed our characters and told us what they expect from us. When your producers trust you and make you comfortable on the sets, you get clarity. There was no communication gap and that’s really helping me out. The day they came on the set and we spoke to them, it was a very different experience. All the credit goes to Nilanjana ma’am and Herumb sir for following this lovely approach. They were speaking to actors one on one. I’ve done shows earlier and no producer reached out to me the way these two reached out to us, so it’s good.”