Prachi Desai: I am the queen of my own life and never take any pressure

I am a secure person and strong-headed, which is why when I decided I needed reinvention in terms of the roles that I was doing, I was willing to wait for the right parts,” says Prachi Desai, who after Rock On 2 and Azhar in 2016, was recently seen in a digital film, Silence, co-starring Manoj Bajpayee.

“But you can’t know if you will get the roles you want in a year or a month. There have been certain roles that I did in the past, with ease and enjoyed playing them too, but they were getting repetitive. So, an actor’s charm gets lost then. I knew doing something different was important. I am the queen of my own life and never take any pressure. If I feel answerable, it is only to myself and always for personal reasons,” she says.

Desai agrees that there are certain pressures in the industry, not just about working or being seen on screen but also paying bills. “Had I let that pressure get to me, I would have agreed to all the offers that came to me. I got many roles with great directors and stories but I felt the role wouldn’t benefit me in any way. The roles didn’t add anything to my career so I’d to let go of those films. It comes from the space of being strong minded and knowing what I want. Being the limelight wasn’t my goal as anyway I shy away from it. I don’t socialised a lot and kept my communication limited,” she shares, adding experience also helped shaped her choices.

Desai started her career with TV and later moved on to films. Looking back, she feels, a girl out of no where, making it in the entertainment industry is a huge deal. “I never imagined that in my 12th standard I would be picked to play a lead in a huge daily soap. In two years, I would see the best side of TV fame, which I am eternally grateful for. People remembered me for a really long time. Because of that break, I got my debut with Rock On! (2008) which wasn’t planned or expected. I have no complaints. I think we should give credit to ourselves for doing one film or 20 films, for making it, our choices, journey and success. I feel, it is the only the industry and media that decide the level of fame one has as you can’t compare one artist to another. Everyone is different in their own way,” she says.