The spotlight is perhaps the best vantage point from where one can look back at how far s/he has come. Aparshakti Khurana would agree. Over the weekend, the actor became the toast of the town for his internalised performance in Jubilee. Set in the Hindi film industry of the late ’40s and early ’50s, Vikramaditya Motwane’s series sees Khurana play Binod Das, a sincere lab assistant who goes on to become a movie star.

The actor says he identified with Das’s graph as he too had humble beginnings. “I joined a music channel as a stylist, and worked there as one till I got the job as an anchor. In that office, never before had a stylist become an anchor. When I used to style the show’s hosts, who may or may not have been talented, clean their shoes, or tie their shoelaces, I approached it with the same sincerity as I did anchoring,” he recounts.

There is another evident parallel between the actor and his character in the Amazon Prime Video offering, also starring Prosenjit Chatterjee, Aditi Rao Hydari and Sidhant Gupta. Khurana’s work in Jubilee has left people as shocked as Das’s rise to stardom does on the show. Until now, the actor was known for his comic turns.

“I’m not looking to shock people. That feeling comes when you have been bitter in life, and you think, ‘Now, I’ll show people what I am capable of.’ I was rather grateful that I was working with good people, doing films like Stree [2018] and Dangal [2016]. I never felt like proving a point to anyone. I’d like to believe that good things happened to me because I was never bitter about things. I want to pleasantly surprise people with my work.”

One has to credit Motwane for casting him in a role that no one would’ve expected him to ace. Khurana says, “Despite making films with stars like Anil Kapoor, Ranveer Singh and Rajkummar Rao, he treats everybody equal on set. No one else does so. Only two [filmmakers] treat everybody on merit, from a spot boy to an actor — Nitesh Tiwari and Vikram sir.”