After quitting a lucrative career as a lawyer, how TVF’s Nidhi Bisht found success as an actor
In a candid chat with YS Weekender, TVF’s Creative Director, Nidhi Bisht reveals how taking the unconventional path led her to acting and a bunch of memorable roles.
Unlike most people made popular by the boom in the Indian web space, Nidhi Bisht, had always wanted to be an actor. For the longest time, this was her dream and having grown up in Delhi and on a healthy dose of Bollywood, acting was naturally on her mind, she says.
But like anyone else, brought up in a middle-class working family, Nidhi was advised against the idea. Instead of giving in to the ups and downs of a career in the entertainment industry, she was advised by her father, a now-retired senior police officer, to pursue a more stable and secure career first.
Nidhi obliged, and what followed next was her brief but very successful stint as a lawyer. A student of the Faculty of Law at the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University, in Delhi, she went on to work as a litigating lawyer with one of the best IPR lawyers in the country at that time, who is now a Delhi high court judge.
Nidhi Bisht
“I worked for almost two years with her, made a good living, earned a lot as well,” says the actor, “but somewhere down the line I realised that this is not what I want to do.”
This realisation hit hard, and so did the Farhan Akhtar-starring movie, Rock On (which released around the year 2008, serving bucketload of inspiration to the aspiring millennials of the time). And thus, armed with her newfound motivation, Nidhi decided to quit her career in law and follow her first love – acting.
The move to Mumbai and tryst with TVF
Nidhi’s journey in the showbiz has been far from conventional.
Nidhi in a scene from Cubicles
A popular face from the many videos/shows produced by The Viral Fever (TVF), the actor-cum writer (she also serves as the Creative Director at TVF) has had to scale a few mountains before she found a footing in the entertainment space.
“When I started out early in my career,” she recalls, “Casting directors used to tell me that you have a round face, and round faced-actors only get the roles of aunties, cousins and so on.”
A poster of the series, Cubicles
But the relentless person that Nidhi is, she didn’t let these setbacks come in her way. Perhaps the reason why the actor doesn’t let her initial struggles overshadow her achievements.
“I don’t think it’s fair to call (what I went through) a struggle, because I know what struggle is, having seen people around me go through it. Practically, for them, feeling low or saying that they are at their lowest point makes sense,” she tells us, before letting us into her mind and the only moments when she has felt low.
A self-confessed workaholic, for Nidhi, says these are those times when she has felt idle, devoid of work.
“In 2010, sometime around October, I was doing five plays, which meant, back-to-back rehearsals, lasting from morning to evening. And play rehearsals can get quite hectic,” she shares.
Around mid-October, however, there came a time when all these shows had gone to stage. That’s when it hit her. Not being busy or involved with one project or the other is her Achilles heel. Those are the only times, she says, she has felt the ‘lows’.
Redefining the role of women in comedy
Before the likes of Netflix (and closer to home, platforms like TVF) came to being, there weren’t many avenues for a woman in comedy. It was either a hysterical portrayal or an outlandish character, lacking the subtle comic charms and timings of their male counterparts. Thanks to the expanded scope, made possible by the various OTT platforms, however, the role of women in comedy has come of age.
Nidhi is a lawyer turned actor
In fact, Nidhi herself has experimented quite a bit with her roles so far; whether it is the wildly popular sketch – also the one marking her big launch – Caller Naina or her part in Chai Sutta Chronicles or the 2017 series where she plays the lead, called Bisht, Please! She has never shied away from the unconventional, a streak that continues with her next show as well.
As opposed to the archetypal woman boss on TV, Nidhi’s character in the upcoming TVF series, Cubicles – a varied take on the oft-ignored 9-5 job – is compassionate and fiercely protective.
“You can’t beat around the bush with her, you can’t dilly-dally with her, but at the same time if someone from the outside questions her team members, she becomes the mama lion that she is,” quips Nidhi, sharing a glimpse into the role she plays in Cubicles, team lead Megha Asthana.
Sometimes not fitting into the ‘conventional’ could be a blessing in disguise. In Nidhi’s case, that very much seems to be the case. Not just in her own performance, the actor-cum-casting director has showcased her signature streak of bold even with the eccentric mix of cast she has assembled at TVF. Her selection being guided by one solo factor alone – acting and performance skills and not just good looks.
A choice that has since brought to the loyal fans of the Indian web space heartthrobs like Sumeet Vyas, Naveen Kasturia, Jitendra Kumar, and Maanvi Gagroo, to name a few.
After all, as Nidhi says, “when the medium is new, the stories are new; the people have to be new.”
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