5 Hours For Makeup, 10-Hour Shoot: Vikrant Massey Calls Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Biopic White His 'Most Challenging Role' So Far

Vikrant Massey is stepping up to play Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in an upcoming biopic, tentatively titled White. The story is centered on the spiritual guru's pivotal role in helping resolve Colombia’s civil war, a 52-year-long conflict between the nation's government and rebel forces. While appearing on Republic Bharat Sangam, the 12th Fail star called White "unlike any biopic" that viewers may have seen so far. For the role, Vikrant grew out his hair and beard, and according to him, "a lot of prosthetics" have been used to make him look like the subject of the film.

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"It has been the most challenging role for me so far. White is not a conventional biopic that we are used to watching in Bollywood. It's not the story of how he became a Gurudev. People, unfortunately, may not know about this but in Columbia there was a civil war for over 50 years. There, what role India's philanthropist and spiritual guru Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar played and how his teachings and his foundation helped resolve the conflict is shown in the film. It's also the story of India's value system, non-violence and forgiveness. This movie is based on that. It's all fact based. It was phenomenal working on the project," Vikrant shared.

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He added, “Jis tarah ke woh insaan hai, 15,000 km door baith ke bhi unhe takleef huyi. Over 6.5 lakh people were dislocated and left homeless. Over 2.5 lakh people died there. How he went there, brought the opposing factions together and how he was honoured with that country's highest civilian award... The movie is based on this. You will be forced to look into India's value system of forgiveness and non-violence with renewed interest after watching it.”

Vikrant shared that he spent time with Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for essaying him in White and labelled those moments as “special”. He also revealed what impact Sri Sri Ravi Shankar had on his life while they filmed for White. “I got closer to myself while spending time at his ashram and with him. Mahaveer Jain ji the producer of White took me to meet him. I got the chance to get close to him and meet him through this project and I'm so glad. Main apni zindagi mein aur thehrav la paaya unki wajah se. This has had an impact on me. The impact of The Art of Living foundation is huge.”

About Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's reaction to Vikrant essaying him in White, the actor shared, “The first person to watch the movie will be him. I'm nervous thinking what he will say about the film. I have shown him some clippings and he said nothing... So it's all good. There's a lot of prosthetics involved in getting the look right. I had to spend over 5-5.30 hours for the makeup and hair and we shot for over 10 hours on top of that. I pray the hard work pays off.”