Zoa Morani on the initial setback in her career: It was massive mental pressure, I was at the lowest and people told me to try something else

When the going gets tough, not giving up is the mantra, says Zoa Morani. The actor talks about how the initial setback in her career made her take a “step back and introspect”. After her debut, Always Kabhi Kabhi (2011), her next project Mastaan never took off and Bhaag Johnny (2015) didn’t do well either.

Looking back she shares, “I wasn’t being able to prove myself in my first film, I didn’t get the calls from the people I wanted to work with. It was upsetting when Bhaag Johnny didn’t work. I wasn’t getting the kind of roles I wanted and it was hard to deal with it and people were like why don’t you think of something else? It was massive mental pressure; I was at the lowest in my life, literally a phase when everything was going wrong.”

And then came a point when she thought of starting from scratch and joined theatre workshop. For the three years that followed, she did theatre plays and yoga that helped her calm down and get discipline back in her life.

 

“Luckily for me OTT happened and I got Akoori (2018) and Bhoot Purva (2019). Web has definitely opened up so much more especially for actors like me… So many stories are being made and so many people are watching them,” says the actor, who was seen in Bejoy Nambiar’s Taish in December 2020.

Daughter of producer Karim Morani, the actor weighs in on the inside vs outsider debate in Bollywood and says that her journey does explain a lot.

“It doesn’t matters where you come from and who your parents are because your journey is yours and so is your destiny. Yes, I did get a launch but it was tough because my father didn’t want me to get into this profession. So, there was a lot of upheaval at home and I thought I’ll prove myself to him with my work, but my career not taking off shattered my dreams. May be someone else’s journey is different, may be nothing is fixed but we all go through the same grind,” concludes the actor, whose next two films are Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Tuesdays and Thursdays and Reem Kagti’s Fallen.

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Author tweets @Shreya_MJ