Getting To Know Emerging Actor In Bollywood – Kunal Thakur

Marketeer turned model, Kunal Thakur made his Bollywood debut acting alongside Shahid Kapoor in his recent film Kabir Singh. The model-turned-actor talks exclusively to Libas Now about the shift in career, his time on sets and everything we can expect from this debutant in future.

The movie, Kabir Singh received a lot of backlash for glorifying misogyny and toxic masculinity and had been under the spotlight for quite some time. Libas Now, in an exclusive interview with debutant Kunal Thakur talk about his first Bollywood experience with Kabir Singh, the controversy, his time on sets with Shahid Kapoor and so much more.

Taking a giant leap of faith, Kunal, a former Dubai-based media marketeer moved to Mumbai – The City of Dreams to follow his passion for acting. Kunal was lucky to find himself a role, in what turned out to be a box-office hit, playing the role of Dr Kamal; a friend to lead actor, Shahid Kapoor as Dr Kabir Singh.

Being a debutant, Kunal was ecstatic to land a role alongside Shahid Kapoor; he was lucky to find himself a “warm and courteous” team to work with for his first Bollywood experience. Along with Kunal, the film introduced three more actors as well – Soham Majumdar, Anusha Sampath and Swati Seth. Before the shooting started for the movie, the cast and crew had an ice-breaking session for them to build a comfort zone, especially with the debutants.

While talking about the controversy around the movie, Kunal said that the entire team that has worked on the project does not endorse toxic masculinity in any way as everyone comes from a very responsible mind frame. They also understand the sensitivity of the topic in this “woke era”. With that being said, he said that there was so much more to the film than just the flawed character of Dr Kabir Singh.

“The movie is a work of fiction; it’s a cult film, the end goal was for people to hate the character and to tell people that people like Kabir Singh exist in our society and you don’t want to be that person,” he said.

When asked about his experience working with Shahid, the actor said that it was an experience he wouldn’t forget. Not only because he is a great co-star but also because it was amazing to see him stay in his character the entire time, which Shahid was able to put across on the screens via his performance.

He laughed as he recalled a moment in Lonavala after shooting for a scene, “After shooting, Shahid went back to the hotel, whereas the rest of the crew met and we just chilled, sang songs and had a good laugh- much needed after winding up everything on the set.”

With that being said, Kunal told us that his move to the acting field was very gradual after he moved to India, from expanding his social and professional network to his first audition, each has been an obstacle on its own.

“It can be challenging for one to expand their craft in a particular manner to sustain oneself,” the actor said, adding that “I was very nervous at my first audition, couldn’t even introduce myself, but I’ve put in a lot of effort and over time, it got easy and that’s how I landed a role in my first feature film”.

With a dream to star alongside Ayushman Khurrana, Vicky Kaushal and Rajkumar Rao one day, the young actor is working hard on various projects to make his way through the super-competitive industry. His latest works include an English short film Grim Reaper – in which he plays the reaper. “The concept is based on euthanasia – dignity in debt.” He is currently shooting for another English film in Mauritius which includes actors from various countries including France, Canada, London etc. We can’t wait to see all of his future projects.