Known for films like Always Kabhi Kabhi, Love Day among others, Harsh Nagar is set to make his television debut with Star Bharat’s new show —Kartik Purnima. The young actor says that for years he has been saying no to TV. But when the show was offered to him, he agreed because he was being offered the title role, which was prominent too. “Usually TV is about women because women watch these shows. Our show is based on these two people (Kartik and Purnima) and there is so much goodness in the story. Both the characters have many positive things in them,” he says while promoting Kartik Purnima, which is going on air today. It also stars Poulami Das, Kavita Ghai, Geetanjali Mishra, Ravi Gosain, Mohit Chauhan and others.
He says that the makers have created the show with the intention of passing on positive and healthy values to the audience. Kartik Purnima is about two families, who belong to different strata of the society and with different social values. “There is no hero or villain. Everyone has their own perspective about life,” he says.
How close is he to his onscreen character and Harsh says both of them are emotionally very similar. “Both Kartik and I do not get angry easily and superficial things do not matter to us. We love poetry and our life revolves around our work and family. That was also the reason, I decided to do the show because when you are similar to the character you are playing, it becomes easy. You do not need to convince yourself to say a certain thing or react in a certain manner,” he says.
Explaining his stance on moving to TV, Harsh says that lot of people who had started off their career with him are now doing TV. “I could see their stardom as so many people know them. If they saying something, it’s powerful. Even if they do some film it has weightage and the producer is sure about their fandom,” he says, adding, “I like the fact that TV connects you with the audience as you are a part of their household every single day.”
The sensibilities of films and TV are quite different as the latter is a loud medium. Did he take time to adjust to the sensibilities and he replies, “Every medium has its own uniqueness. In films, we know the hero will win in the end, the boy will get the girl or something will occur in the climax.
Likewise, on TV you have to create content episode after episode so most stories revolve around home and office because it’s practical.” Harsh adds that because he got a month before the shoot, it helped him understand the character and he got himself acquainted with the medium. “It was a challenge. Also, because I do not watch TV, it kind of helped that I had one month to prepare. I also took help from my co-star Poulami, the creative heads,” says the actor who has also worked in a web series.
Inspite of making his movie debut with a film produced by Red Chillies Entertainment, Harsh did not get the right kind of projects. For an actor, it’s a difficult phase. Harsh says that his dad was very disheartened. “I started my career at the age of 18 and I was very immature. I did not think of long term. A film takes a year to make during which you are very high. Always Kabhi Kabhi did not do well but I did get couple of films, which did not release. I was doing lot of ads so for my relatives, I was on TV now and then. Till that time, the urgency button hadn’t hit me,” he says, adding, “Love Day did not do well because it wasn’t promoted well. That’s when I realised that it wasn’t a good thing to keep on waiting. I was therefore concentrating on writing a web series and that’s when I was offered this show.”
