Call me Bae actor Vihaan Samat is in CTRL of his career choices

There's a certain ease with which India's newest crush Vihaan Samat presents himself. Even after the recent success of two back-to-back projects Call Me Bae and CTRL, he's grounded to a fault. 

Instead of being fixated on the outcome of his work, the Mumbai-based celebrity quickly deviates the conversation to the preparation and hard work that goes behind the making of each character. 

“Both are very different roles but I also think it comes in the writing. If CTRL was more conversational sometimes, Call Me Bae probably had more punchy dialogues,” he tells YS Life. “In terms of understanding the characters better, we had workshops and conversations with the director to play the part accordingly,” he adds. 

While Agastya (or Aggy) in Call Me Bae is a rich businessman who loves a good life, Joe in Vikramaditya Motwane’s CTRL is an influencer who earns his living through social media but eventually discovers its dark side. 

Samat’s range as an actor is visible in both projects as they are poles apart from each other. “Both characters live somewhere within me. I don't necessarily operate like that on a daily basis but it's about what side of myself I want to bring out,” he explains. 

Getting into the skin of characters

CTRL is a cautionary tale on cybercrime and the perils of artificial intelligence. While the track was largely around actor Ananya Panday, Samat had an important character. Joe’s brand of activism was appreciated by the audience, also because it was portrayed in an approachable format. 

“I quite enjoy taking control of a room, talking about business and goals, and lavish parties and acts of service. There's another part of me that enjoys the internet and the deep web and data rights and consumer rights,” reiterates Samat. 

However, did its filming cause any psychological impact afterward? “It didn't necessarily cause much impact. There are certain characteristics about a character you take with you depending on how long you shoot for. With CTRL, I shot for 11 days,” he highlights. 

In some ways, his monologue in the film—an integral part in the run-up to the climax—where he exposes the culprits of the anti-Internet freedom movement was an intense affair. 

“I had shut myself in a room for two days with three pages of dialogue. It was about six minutes of talking. I went through the text over and over again to get into a headscape of someone who might be feeling threatened or tracked, to perform the way it should be,” he recalls. 

“That was before the shoot though. After it was done, I came out feeling a bit lighter. But I think a part of me is now more conscious about security, privacy, online data, and big companies and their terms and conditions,” says Samat. 

Almost always, he's received a thumbs up from the audience for portraying someone real and relatable. Is that his superpower? 

“I think my job is to play each character as realistically and truthfully as possible. I try to humanise as much as I can. Think of me as a fleshed out person with good and bad parts. If I do my job well enough, there's a higher chance that people will like me,” he says. 

The right place, the right time 

Samat might be the talk of the town today but he's had his share of struggles to be where he is. The actor confesses his love for cinema since he was a child. 

“I would say I want to be a singer, actor, dancer, standup comedian, producer and director, and my parents would think I am joking around. Every year, I would cut down one from the list in no particular order. What remained was an actor,” he laughs. 

At that point, his parents got ‘scared’ because Samat was serious. He was performing some plays in school that he enjoyed, which further reassured him that his love affair with acting was here to stay. 

“I remember feeling free and light on stage. It was a place where I could float, there were no right or wrong answers. This is what inspired me and I applied to acting school in the US to study,” he shares. 

After sticking around for a year post his course at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Samat bagged his first role in Worth (2020), starring Michael Keaton. 

But he was sure of getting back home and working in India. “I wanted to work in this blossoming entertainment space in the country. Sacred Games was released in 2018. When I came back to India, it was the initial stages of streaming and I wanted to tap into it. I wanted to work on big films but also on stories with a unique perspective.”

During most of his auditions back then, his American accent became a deterrent in getting the part. While his Hindi was strong having grown up in Mumbai, he picked up a slight twang living in the US for five years. “I spoke to people about it and worked on it after getting feedback from auditions. It was an unlearning process,” he says. 

A little later, his meeting with Akarsh Khurana of Mismatched fame turned out to be the turning point of his career. “When I went for the audition, I was informed that this person is from California. I remember asking the casting assistant if this person was from America or an Indian who was coming back to his homeland? I was told he was American, that's when I tried auditioning with the accent,” he mentions. 

This time around, the audition worked well for him and the rest is history. “I had a good feeling about it. As they say, it's all about the right thing at the right time. I had the skill set and hence I got the role.”

To a bright future 

Samat is keen on playing as many different characters and showing his versatility on screen. Next, he wants to be in larger-than-life, masala films. “You can only go out, chase films and audition for them. But I guess at the end of the day, it's the producers’ call. In the coming years, I hope you see me in some very different tonalities.”

In the pipeline is The Royals with Netflix. There's no release date in hand but Samat hopes it will be out next year. “It was a huge cast but a lot of fun to shoot in a new location in Jaipur. It's a layered character I'm very excited about. I had to learn how to become a polo player in this one,” he says. 

“It's a comedic show and not just dramatic. Zeenat Aman is in it and she's an icon. Stay tuned for it,” concludes Samat.