Mid-Day Anniversary Special: How a missed wedding and a dance floor got Siddhant Chaturvedi Gully Boy

Dance like no one’s watching, they say. And that’s exactly what Siddhant Chaturvedi did. Luckily for him, someone was watching. That someone was Zoya Akhtar. The actor landed his Bollywood break, Gully Boy (2019), because of the dance floor. “A wedding, a detour, and the dance floor,” Chaturvedi corrected us.    

It turned out, as the first season of Inside Edge premièred in July 2017, Chaturvedi, who had a supporting role in the series, was at his cousin’s wedding. “Inside Edge released while I was in Kolkata,” he recalled. Work was the last thing on his mind as he enjoyed the pre-wedding festivities. But a message from the team of Excel Entertainment, which produced the web series, came in. He was invited to Inside Edge’s success party. “I told the team that I wouldn’t be able to make it. My dad insisted I should go.”

So, a last-minute plan was made. Chaturvedi, the aspiring actor in the family, was to go for his first success party. While his father booked his ticket, his cousins bought him new clothes for the big bash and midst-wedding they saw him off. 

Chaturvedi headed to the party at Estella in Juhu in Mumbai. The success of his show, coupled with his unfulfilled desire to dance at the baaraat, meant that he hit the dance floor with zeal. “I went all out. No one knew me, so I danced like crazy,” he laughed. He caught Akhtar’s eye. Having written Gully Boy with Reema Kagti, she was scouting for actors for prominent roles in the Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt-starrer. “I said to Zoya at the party, ‘Hello, I’m in Inside Edge.’ She said she hadn’t watched it yet. I was a little sad to hear that. Anyway, I kept dancing like a carefree soul. Zoya thought I had great energy, and decided to audition me for the rap part.”

Chaturvedi was called in the next day to audition for the role of MC Sher, a street rapper who becomes the protagonist’s closest friend. “I had one day to prepare and couldn’t memorise anything. So, I wrote my own rap and performed it.” Two days later, he got a selection call for the next round of auditions. This breakthrough came to him at a critical time, he admitted. “By this time, I was breaking down internally. I was 24 and had quit CA.

Four or five years had passed. I was starting to think, ‘If this doesn’t happen now, what will I do?’” When the film released in 2019, Chaturvedi was the breakout star. Had he anticipated such a start in Bollywood? “I remember during one of the Gully Boy auditions, I said to myself, ‘There’s something about this.’ So, I went for it. The rest is history!”

2019
When Siddhant Chaturvedi made his Bollywood debut