The brother, the mother, "Prada" and his Wife?  ZAlebs speaks to Isidingo actor Ashish Gangarpersad about the scandelous plot his character "Prada" has found himself in on the soapie.

‘Prada’ is facing a huge dilemma with him being pressured to marry a woman in order to get an inheritance of R1million. When you read the script what was your first re-action to such a plot?

I was actually quite involved in the story from conception point, before the story was even written I knew what was going to happen up until a certain point. Initially when I heard that the plot was based on the topic of arranged marriage I was sort of  against unless it unless it was done for the right reasons so we couldn’t just have an arranged marriage it’s something that’s a bit outdated. So the background story had to be something enticing, originally we wanted to tell a story of what it is to be accepted and how far would a family go to force someone to live a lie.  The other aspect is that we wanted the plot to be extremely entertaining, to have a lot of backstabbing and con-artists so we put the two together and that is what we came up with, a family filled with lies and scandals and dark secrets and that’s where the entertainment came from.  So we added to aspects the acceptance and the scandals to make the plot even more enticing instead of just concentrating on an arranged marriage.

In real life if you were gay how would you tackle such a situation, being forced to marry for money? 

That’s actually a good question and funny enough even to this day people still think I’m gay in real life even though they’re well aware that I’m married, it doesn't matter, to them I’m gay it's hilarious to me.  I think as an actor that’s the highest compliment I’ve been given, to a play a character so well that people can’t differentiate between the real and the fiction but to answer your question, knowing myself I would never give into marriage for the wrong reasons if it was to help my family I probably would but after learning that it’s not only about the family but for other peoples selfish reasons I’d most certainly draw the line right there and then.

How it is like acting alongside the beautiful Kajal Bagwandeen…her character ‘Devina Singh’ is quite the feisty character?

It was wonderful, the only family relationship that “Prada” had was with “Priya” and their relationship is one of the strongest in terms of family.  They can fight today and tomorrow they're back to being the best of friends.  So it’s good to see “Prada” in a situation where he’s not on the same level with his immediate family.  In terms of working with Kajal and the other new cast members it has been absolutely fantastic I never worked with any of these actors before but it's really been a great pleasure to have some new fresh talent on the set.  They’re great people on and off the set and also exude such great energy, it really is a pleasure working with them plus they're fun to work with which also makes my job much easier.

In Hollywood most actors who play gay roles have seen their careers catapulted to the sky or die down, were you ever hesitant of taking up the character of “Prada”? 

A lot of people would actually assume that I was hesitant to take upon “Prada’s” character because he’s gay the truth is I was afraid to take up the character because he had a limited character lifespan. The production team was very honest with me; I was informed that “Prada” was coming in at this point and exiting at that point.  For me that through me off completely and I started to question my confidence and abilities as an actor, so that coupled with the fact that the character was gay birthed another fear of me disrespecting the gay culture or doing something that wouldn’t be excepted by the gay culture and even amongst the Indian culture.  “Prada’s” character is not one that’s easily digested but I spoke to those closest to me and their moral support just gave me the courage to dive into this character and do it justice and people just really fell in love with “Prada” and in terms of the longevity for the character I fulfilled the contractual part which made “Prada” stay for longer as a resident of the Deep.

What can people expect from Ashish in the year 2014?

This year I’m tied up with an international film, I start filming at the end of September I’ve got a support role in the film which I’m really looking forward to doing.  It’s a heavily CGI driven film, so that’s going to be fun! The title of the film is called Chander Phaar.  I’ve also been working on a film script for the past four years, it’s taken me that long because I feel that in the film industry in South Africa we haven’t accomplished what the likes of Hollywood and Bollywood have accomplished and by that I mean to unite people in terms of film.   There's never been a film in this country that unites our Rainbow Nation as a whole, we're always focused on a specific type of audience, there's never been a film that crosses the racial or religious barriers so I’m working on a film that will unite South African’s as a whole. The title of the film will be called  "Unborn Differant" 

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