Mihir Ahuja undergoes intense prep to play a teen with a stammer in Shabad – Reet Aur Riwaaz

Mihir Ahuja

It was love at first read for Mihir Ahuja with Shabad - Reet Aur Riwaaz, in which he plays a boy whose football dreams clash with his father's hopes of him becoming a singer. But the actor knew the role would demand intense prep, since he was to play a guy with a stammer.

Ahuja shares, "My speech therapist [made me understand] that there can be multiple reasons for the stammer. It can be PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder], family pressure, or trauma. My character is an amalgamation of all the [cases] I studied, thanks to the speech therapist."

The actor, 27, also had to shed kilos to look younger in the ZEE5 series. He recalls, "Jayati Pandya, the showrunner, was not convinced about [casting me] because the role was of a 16-year-old. I asked her to give me a month, and I lost around six-seven kilos in that period."