Ankit Tiwari on his acting debut in a music video for his first non-film single
Bryan Durham (DNA; May 28, 2016)
The last time we spoke in 2014, Ankit Tiwari told us about Badtameez (at the time, it was a Dharma-Balaji project which hasn’t seen the light of day yet). We recently caught up with Ankit at his studio and he spoke of another Badtameez, his first ever non-film single. The music video for the romantic rock ballad also marks his debut as an actor of sorts, opposite actress Sonal Chauhan.
The lavishly mounted video shows the singer as an incorrigible romantic and something of a violent trouble-seeker, a trait he insists his miles away from his real-life persona. “You know me. I’m not like that at all.”
I tell him I do know that, which makes his ‘acting’ all the more believable. But starring in his own video — a given during the Indipop days of the 90s and early 00s — is relatively new territory to the singer-actor.
“My Badtameez director Siddhanth Sachadev used to be Mohit Suri’s AD. My brother Ankur (MD of their production house Brotherhood Productions) and I felt he was perfect for this project, which we came up with the concept for some time last year. It began as a track for one of our upcoming films, but soon took on a life of its own when we were approached by the label to finalise on a song they wanted to work with us on.”
Was it always a romantic track? Ankit says it had a slightly different avatar— about an unapologetic bad boy. “The romantic angle came later, when we were prevailed upon to add the boy-falls-for-girl angle in. We brainstormed with the lyricist Manoj Muntashir, who then gave shape to the song you see now.”
Was Sonal his pick for the video? “While I have enjoyed her work in Jannat among other films, she was selected by our production house and the director, Siddhant,” he maintains.
And despite being his first serious stab at acting, Ankit reveals the shoot was wrapped in seven days flat in Goa and Mumbai. He explains his process, saying, “Acting is something I wasn’t prepared for, but there is a lot that my director Siddhanth invested in me and I hope the end result is what people like. Moreover it’s my music and song that I hope it wins over people’s hearts.”
Admittedly, it’s a bigger role than his last screen appearance (he was in a blink-in-a-miss appearance in Aashiqui 2, where he played himself). In the video for Badtameez, he appears for most of the seven minutes (three in the TV version) it runs for in its extended avatar online.