A decade into television, Mishkat Varma has learnt to turn self-doubt into fuel. The actor admits that insecurity keeps him from becoming complacent and pushes him to work harder on his craft. “Self-doubt helps me perform better. I don’t like being complacent. And I don’t like compliments. I don’t want to know [how I performed]. If you don’t tell me anything, I’ll assume that I’m doing well. I work my best when I’m insecure,” shares the actor, who accepts that his new show, Dillon Ki Ram-Leela, has “cut all my comfortable nuances”.

In Dillon Ki Ram-Leela, Varma plays the trusted personal assistant to Eijaz Khan’s Virendra Sehgal. Following Kavya – Ek Jazbaa, Ek Junoon (2023), which he says changed how people viewed him as an actor, Varma calls Ram his “most difficult” role yet. “Even though he’s the hero of the show, I can’t play it like a hero. Whenever I’ve gone slightly heroic, [my director tells me] ‘Don’t walk like a hero. Don’t act like a hero’. I don’t know how to not do that. And that’s exactly why I love the show. I absolutely detest heroism in television. Here, I’m introduced in a simple way. And as the show progresses, you realise that his heroism is not [over-the-top]. His simplicity is his heroism.”