When Vikramaditya Motwane cast Vihaan Samat as a young relationship influencer in CTRL, he had one requirement from the actor—weight gain. The idea was to make the character of Joe Mascarenhas “boyish and chubby,” recalls Samat, who, skinny at 55 kilos, put on six kilos for the role.

“Vikram wanted a sweet and bright-eyed guy, who would complement Ananya [Panday].” The actor was initially reluctant about the weight gain, considering the film industry expects male actors to sport a chiselled physique. “There is a lot of emphasis on body type in this industry, and I was skeptical to do that. What helped was the thought that I was building muscle.”

The Netflix cyber thriller also required the actor to understand the world it was set in. Samat shares, “I watched [offerings] similar to CTRL, like Searching [2018], and Black Mirror.”

The highlight for him was, of course, working with Motwane. He believes collaborating with the director changed him as an artiste.

“With him, I learnt the power of silence. On the first day of shooting, after we finished a scene, Vikram said nothing to us. Sometimes, he’d sit with his head buried in his hands, and I used to think that my career was over. I’d [worry that] I disappointed him so much that he is questioning my casting. Eventually, I realized it was his process, where he sits and edits in his head for three minutes. If I got a ‘good’ from Vikram, my day was made.”