Actor Pavail Gulati might have started his acting career back in 2010 but it was filmmaker Anubhav Sinha’s social drama Thappad co-starring Taapsee Pannu which propelled him to nationwide fame. The film saw him playing a grey character and won him raving reviews. However, the onset of the pandemic caused a halt in his career and two years later in 2022, Pavail returned to the movies with two projects – Dobaaraa and Goodbye. He also had a release with filmmaker Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s web series, Faadu: A Love Story.
Not the one to be deterred by the two-year lull, he exclusively tells News18 that he chose to count his blessings without focusing too much on the bygones. “I was genuinely happy and busy in 2022. I made my family very happy and that was the biggest gift. My last release Thappad was in 2020 and then the lockdown happened. So, it took time for the movies and the shows to get made. But as they say, der aaye durust aaye. 2022 has been a wonderful year. I’m in a very happy and content space. I wish to have a year like this every year,” he elaborates.
While Dobaaraa was a supernatural thriller that saw Pavail in an intense role as DCP Anay Anand, Goodbye helped explore a light-hearted space. Faadu: A Love Story, on the other hand, traced the rise of a man from poverty to lead an extraordinary life. And he believes that it was this web show that proved to be his most challenging work this year. “I don’t come from that social strata and style of upbringing. Going through that experience, spending time with Ashwiny ma’am and bringing Abhay (his character) to life was the biggest learning process for me,” he says.
Pavail also believes that being a part of the show was a rather ‘fulfilling’ experience, which helped him grow as an artiste. Talking about it, he shares, “I lived that character for a long time since it was a series. We shot it for 74 days all over Mumbai, Alibaug, Gujarat and Serbia. It’s not a part or a show that I would get every day. I’m thankful to Ashwiny ma’am, who had the faith in me that I could play the part. The character was abundantly giving towards me.”
Though the series earned him a thumbs up, Dobaaraa and Goodbye had an underwhelming performance at the box office and received mixed responses from the critics. But Pavail remains unfazed. He emphasises that the reviews of his close circle are all that matter to him. “It doesn’t bother me at all because I think you can’t make everyone happy. Art is very subjective. I’m very content with the reviews that people around me give me. I don’t have yes men around me and that’s a good thing. My friends and family are my biggest critics and if they don’t like something, they’ll say it to my face and that might make me feel upset for some time but a couple of days later, I might realise the problems that they’re pointing out,” he explains.
The Yudh (2014) and Ghost Stories (2020) actor further states that he never lets negative feedback get to him. “If the reviews are good, then it’s great for me. If they aren’t, I don’t care about them to the extent that they will upset me. I usually don’t take them to heart. Having said that, I’ll read them if they’re objective enough and if I can learn something from them and implement them in my next films. I don’t ever get into a space thinking that a bad review will destroy my life,” he adds.
So, how does he deal with comments on social media, which offer both gratification and discontent instantaneously? “When a film releases, you want to know how the audience has taken it and to figure that out, you might go to social media. But following a couple of days, I move on. The unanimous reviews come in by then. It’s not a conscious effort on my part to look out for comments on social media. My family does that because they’re a little obsessed with these things. I tell them not to do that,” says Pavail.
Quiz him about his social media habits and he reveals, “I get a lot of flak from my management team because I’m terrible at social media. It’s not something that I go to on a daily basis and I don’t post too much. I’m a little private in that sense. If I do log in and bump into comments, I do read them.”
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