Vedang Raina On How Jigra Impacted His Mental Health: "I Was In Solitary Confinement..."

Vedang Raina is currently gearing up for the release of his upcoming film Jigra. This is his second movie after The Archies. In a recent interview, Vedang confessed that filming emotional scenes in Jigra had an impact on his mental health. The actor mentioned that contrary to his co-star Alia Bhatt, it took him longer to get out of his character. “Alia would be in the scene, hit all the right notes with precision and get out of the character as soon as she heard ‘cut'. But I couldn't, it is not easy for me to come in and out of character. It did impact my mental health a bit,” Vedang said in a chat with Mansworld India. 

He added, “On the very first day, I was to shoot a rather emotionally intense scene, and I shut myself in my vanity, put the lights off, switched off my phone, and told people to just leave me alone - I sat there listening to my music. Now, as luck would have it, the shot was supposed to happen at 3 pm but got delayed and we started rolling around 8 pm. So, I was in that self-imposed solitary confinement for about 8 long hours, and it really started impacting me.” 

Vedang further revealed that it used to take him “2-3 hours” to get out of the zone. He said, “Even when the scenes were done, I couldn't get out of that zone for 2/3 hours. I realised that it is not going to work like this, and after that, I have decided not to put myself through such a thing… it is not worth it and I believe there are other ways to access that emotion, I just need to find which one works for me the best.” 

Directed by Vasan Bala, Jigra features Vedang Raina and Alia Bhatt as brother and sister. The film is co-produced by Alia and Karan Johar under the banner of Eternals Sunshine Productions and Dharma Productions. It will release in theatres on October 11.