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Amol Mhatre, Local Hero To Star In ABC Sitcom
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Chitra Parayath 10/07/2003
Amol Mhatre will appear in the Boston based ABC sitcom, It’s all Relative ( October 15) as a medical student/resident.
Amol spoke to us from Los Angeles about the experience of working on the show.
Well after being out here for almost three years I finally got some sort of break into the mainstream American media. I received a call from my agent ( from whom I hadn’t heard from in 2 months) for an audition for the new television show "It's All Relative".
It was for the guest-starring role of Sanji Rajam. I went in for the audition, read for the part and thought nothing of it. In fact I was downright shocked when I received a call back for the role. The next day I went into the Paramount studios to read the scenes again, except this time for the writers and producers.
I just tried to stay calm and do my best; luckily I was given the opportunity to take this role. On top of the role, I am now eligible to join SAG or the Screen Actors Guild. What this means is that I can now join the union which represents every professional actor, which therefore opens up many more interesting (and lucrative) opportunities for me.
The shoot for the show was great; everyone on the set was kind, funny and extremely professional. Lenny Clarke, the famous comedian/actor from Boston is also on the show, so it was great to have someone to talk with about the Red Sox.
My character may or may not be a recurring role, but even if I never get the chance to go back on the show, I truly enjoyed my experience and I learned a lot about how television production works.
Amol grew up in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, where his mother Jyotsna, a physician, and his father Anil, an engineer, still reside. He attended Oxford Academy and Worcester Academy, and graduated from Brown University, where he majored in Political Science and minored in Theater Arts. Theatre has been Amol’s passion since primary school and he has won numerous awards along the way. Although Amol completed all the required courses for the MCAT exam, with the intention of going into medicine after graduation, he decided to first pursue his dream of becoming a professional actor. So after graduating from Brown in May 2000, he packed his Honda and drove cross-country with a friend to Los Angeles. He immediately found a job with a production company. He associate produced a play in Hollywood with a Dan Putterman of "Birdcage" fame. When he heard that Lemon Tree Films in Hollywood was producing a new feature film, he met the film's co-producer Anjalika Mathur and offered to work as her production assistant. When she learned about his background and interest in acting, she asked him to audition for the role of Kris, the central character in the film “Leela”. For that role, Amol went through 4 auditions, competing against almost 100 other professional actors before receiving that call of a lifetime from the director, Somnath Sen. The cast included some of the biggest names in Indian films (Dimple Kapadia, Vinod Khanna, Dipti Naval, Gulshan Grover). And Indian film critics showered high praise on Amol for his debut performance.
Amol currently lives in Los Angeles and is working with an agent in Hollywood, actively pursuing a career as an actor in the film and television industry. He is also working for a non-profit organization that helps Aids patients find housing. Since “Leela”, Amol has acted in a short film "Badger" (directed by Rajshree Ojha) with the veteran Bengali actor Dhritiman Chatterjee. The film was recently screened at the San Francisco Asian Film Festival.
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