Kill hero Lakshya recalls his struggle in tell-all interview

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“I was constantly told that I was not good enough, and continuously compared with others,” reveals Lakshya, Karan Johar’s latest hero in Kill in a tell-all interview with Humans of Bombay.

Lakshya was an under-confident teenager when he first entered the Indian entertainment industry. “When I was 18, I used to think to myself: “Am I really not good enough? Is there something wrong with me? All those questions started haunting me. Back then, my senior from high school was working with MTV. He told me about Roadies and invited me to give my audition. My mother encouraged me to go for it. The very next day I was told I was selected. I had cracked Roadies. I felt accomplished for the first time in my life. Cut to MTV deciding to give me the option of starring in a fiction show called Warrior High, which eventually became my first show. I chose the fiction show because it gave me a steady income, so it was a no-brainer for me!”

Later, Lakshya was rejected by Yash Raj Films. “I had given a lot of auditions in multiple production houses such as YRF,” he stated. “Eventually, Shanoo Sharma reached out to me. Back then it was for a very different film with YRF. I did not get selected for it. I was very scared. My ultimate high in life was to become a movie star. I felt clueless—what do I do now? I had left television a while back. I did not know what to do with my life. My father would call me every day and say ‘Tu kya kar raha hain (What are you doing)?’”

A week after that, Shanoo Sharma called him and said that Dharma was looking for a new boy and he had to meet Karan Johar directly. “I was shocked that I had to meet Karan Johar!” the actor revealed. “The first thing I did was call up my friend, who was a designer, and ask her what I should wear. He is so fashionable, and I was just a TV actor from Delhi’s Malviya Nagar. In my head, I had to look and sound my best because it was a make-or-break deal.”

But Karan Johar’s audition process was different from all others, “He did lots of photo-shoots to see how I looked on camera. He made me dance to Channa mereya (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil). Eventually, three months later, I found out that I made it,” said Lakshya.

Two films he was decided for did not work out, however. “My heart broke when my first film did not work out because I had worked really hard, and prayed a lot for that opportunity,” Lakshya went on. “I was hoping it would not be taken away from me because I had paid my dues to the universe. Eventually, I sat down with myself and figured out that I wasn’t actually ready. Perhaps it was not my time yet. Maybe those two films did not happen because Kill had to be my debut. But in this whole process, Dharma always had my back.”

The film has got Lakshya a lot of critical appreciation. And Lakshya now is added to the list of non-industry stars that Karan Johar has backed, like Sidharth Malhotra, Tara Sutaria and others who were given major mainstream breaks like Triptii Dimri.