“There is a beautiful dialogue in Tabbar,” recalls Sahil Mehta. “Step-by-step honda sab kuch.” The line, delivered by his onscreen mother, played by the delightful Supriya Pathak, resonates with the newbie every time he faces rejection. And he has faced a fair share of rejections.
Sahil started out in Delhi during the pandemic. This was a period marked by turmoil and uncertainty for every industry. “COVID-19 had just ended after the second lockdown and I saw this casting call. It said that we’re looking for Punjabi actors. And I sent my profile. I somehow just got in touch with the casting guy and it was for Janhvi Kapoor’s Good Luck Jerry. I got the part. Then Tabbar and Raksha Bandhan happened consecutively. Then I auditioned for Farrey. I’m fortunate enough to practise my art and be in the industry,” he says. When asked about his biggest takeaway from working on Farrey, Sahil highlights his bond with his co-stars. “With every project that you do, you get along for a bit, you work together, but then you maybe lose touch. But I still talk to Zeyn (Shaw) late at night. We’re like brothers like we used to be on set. To date when I go to his place, we sleep on the same bed. He wouldn’t sleep in the other room because we talked for like 4-5 hours, we had so much to talk about. It’s a beautiful takeaway.”
But before he could shine in a dark family drama on OTT or co-star with Bollywood stars like Akshay Kumar and Janhvi Kapoor, he had countless auditions, a reality for any budding artiste. It took a while for Sahil to realise that he had been sending videos and cold emails into a void.
“I did small roles earlier. I did a small bit in Hindi Medium Irrfan Khan sir’s film. It was a blink-and-miss role. I started auditioning from Delhi itself for any available role. After five or six months I realised that they were just taking the videos for no reason. They weren’t sending it ahead. Living in Delhi, you don’t realise ki kaise hota hai sab kuch, everything was in Mumbai.” When asked to say more about his stint in Hindi Medium, Sahil laughs. “There was a song in Hindi Medium and I was like ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ Back then it was a yes for everything. The song Hoor plays and you see a younger version of Irrfan Khan’s character. He rides a rickshaw and waves to his friend who is having tea. I thought they’d make me dance, but instead, they wanted me to just stand and have tea. Then they asked me if I could ride a rickshaw because the actor wasn’t able to ride it. Main khush ho gaya ki mujhe main role mil raha hai (I happily thought I was getting the main role). Basically, when you see him riding the rick in the wide shot, that’s me. And then they got me to change and I realised that I’m still the friend who appears for a second while drinking tea.” The actor fondly recalled how his proud father quipped aloud, “Tera scene toh start mein hi hai na?” in a packed screening of the film.
It would take a couple of years for Sahil to find himself on the poster of Farrey or attend the Goa International Film Festival alongside his co-stars Alizeh, Prasanna Bisht and Zeyn Shaw. The cast had been doing more workshop days than shoot days. It was during promotions that the surrealness of the situation hit him.
Opening up about the fascinating experience of playing grey characters, Sahil shares, “I think I’m very innocent, but there must be some grey portion of me that I haven’t explored yet. I try to discover that while playing characters. I always find this very interesting. The character that I did in Good Luck Jerry was a guy in this world of crime. I come from a middle-class family. I have never seen a gun. But they gave me a real gun without the bullets for a scene in the film. You get to discover that dark side of yourself without being that person.”