Akhilendra Mishra initially refused to play Ravana in Anand Sagar's 'Ramayan'; Know why

Akhilendra Mishra played Ravana in Anand Sagar’s Ramayan that released in 2008 and received appreciation for his performance. However, the actor initially disagreed to portrayal the mythological King of Lanka. As it often happens in the industry that the actors' first denies the role and later ends up doing it, the same thing happened with Akhilendra. Read to know why he refused the character.

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Why Akhilendra Mishra rejected Ravana’s role in Anand Sagar’s Ramayan

In a recent interview with The Times of India, Akhilendra Mishra opened up about his decision on not playing Ravana in Anand Sagar’s Ramayan at first. He recalled that he was shooting for Delhi-6, Drona and Chamku simultaneously and during that time he got a call to play the role of Ravana in Anand Sagar’s Ramayan. But, since his dates were clashing, he told them he would not be able to play the role. However, the team told him that his track was later, yet, he denied it at that time. The actor mentioned that later he got a call from the channel saying that they wanted him to play Ravana and asked for his time to set up a meeting. Further, the creator of the show Anand Sagar also called the actor to set up a meeting. He stated that those meetings normally last for an hour at the max, but his meetings went on for four hours.

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Akhilendra Mishra talked about the support he got from the makers of Ramayan. He said that Anand Sagar was “extremely keen” on having him as Ravana in his creation of Ramayan. The actor mentioned that since the shoot was in Baroda and considering his other on-going projects, Anand assured him that his dates would be taken care of. In the end, Akhilendra played Ravana in Ramayana. He also appeared in Chamku, Drona and Delhi-6, all released in the same year, 2008.

Image Source: PR Handout

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Anand Sagar’s Ramayan

The show is a remake of 1987’s blockbuster Ramayan television series. It stars Gurmeet Choudhary as Ram, Debina Bonnerjee as Sita, Ankit Arora as Lakshmana, Vikram Sharma as Hanuman, Akhilendra Mishra as Ravana, Rishabh Sharma as Kush, Perin Monish Malde as Luv, along with others. Anand Sagar’s Ramayan consists of 300 episodes with a running time of around 20 minutes, per episodes. The show is entertaining its followers again as it airs on Dangal channel, every evening at 7:30 pm and repeat telecast at 9:30 am on the next day.

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