It is easy for actors to get boxed in unless they have the hunger to break out, says actor Pulkit Samrat calling himself lucky for the support he received from directors like Bejoy Nambiar and Karan Anshuman who offered him roles against his romantic hero image.Pulkit has reteamed with Anshuman of ‘Mirzapur’ and ‘Inside Edge’ fame for Netflix’s upcoming boxing thriller ‘Glory’, a role that required him to go through intense physical training. He previously worked with the director for “Bangistan” in 2015.“Actors get boxed into a zone, genre and particular performance. To get out of that, you need to have the hunger to do something different and the support of people like Karan Anshuman and Bejoy Nambiar who managed to look at me and say that he is not just a romantic hero or a chocolate boy but he can also be an angry young man and for Karan to feel that he can be a boxer and have the emotional depth,” the actor told PTI in an interview here.“You take that as a challenge and prove to people that you can do it but that needs support from the fraternity. You may not get support from ten people, but two people are enough to change your life.”Pulkit starred in a string romantic and comedy films such as ‘Sanam Re’, ‘Fukrey’ franchise, ‘Dolly Ki Doli’ and ‘Junooniyat’ early in his career.He shifted gears with ‘Taish’ (2020), an action-thriller directed by Nambiar, in which he played a volatile man driven to extremes to correct a wrong, only to spiral into deeper chaos.Though he featured in two episodes of popular show ‘Made In Heaven’, ‘Glory’ marks his full-fledged series debut.The show, set against the gritty, high-stakes world of boxing, dives into the brutal ecosystem and the politics of the place through the story of a medal obsessed boxing coach and his fractured relationship with his two sons — Ravi and Dev — who return home when their father’s student, an Olympics hopeful, is found dead.What attracted Pulkit to the story was its different narrative structure, which steered clear of the typical arc of training montages.“Ravi is not just a boxer in the ring but also a player who is very disciplined in handling life… He has a system in reacting to things, not very impulsive. He is a sportsman, he sleeps like a sportsman, he wakes up like a sportsman, he thinks like a sportsman.“Learning about the sport took me inside the mindset of a boxer and my failures and baggages from life helped me flesh out the complexities. I felt like whatever I had done before was empty compared to what I have done in this show,” the actor said.The 42-year-old actor said the writing by Anshuman and his team served like a Google map for him to navigate the way around in the story.“The entire arc was beautiful and I had a lot of fun playing with it.”Created by Anshuman and Karmanya Ahuja, and produced by Mohit Shah and Anshuman under the Atomic Films banner, ‘Glory’ is written by Anshuman, Ahuja, and Vaibhav Vishal, and directed by Anshuman and Kanishk Varma.The show, which will premiere on Netflix on Friday, also features Dvienendu, Suvinder Pal Vicky, Jannat Zubair, Ashutosh Rana, Sikandar Kher, Kunal Thakur, Sayani Gupta, Yashpal Sharma and Kashmira Pardeshi in pivotal roles.
