Manoj Bajpayee and his Dial 100 co-star Sakshi Tanwar recalled the time when he was her acting instructor when she was a college student in New Delhi. Manoj said that he always knew that she had it in her to succeed in the field, and had been silently admiring her progress over the years.
In an interview, Sakshi recalled how she was spared his anger, and Manoj Bajpayee spoke about his awkwardness at going to a women's college. He told journalist Puja Talwar, "I remember her from there, and I remember telling her, 'You should take this very seriously because you are so good.' And she made me so proud, from a distance. We've never kind of conversed on the phone when she landed from there till now, but I have been quietly very, very proud of what she has made of herself. She's really proved me right about giving her the main role."
Reminiscing about the time, Manoj continued, "I'll tell you another thing, I felt very awkward about going to LSR. It was a girls college, and I am a very shy person. I would be very shy in front of girls. So I would ask a couple of girls to wait for me by the gate. One day, they didn't show up, so I went across the street and killed time at a dhaba... One day, I entered a women's loo there. And while I was in there, a few girls came in and wouldn't leave. So I had to hide there for the coast to clear.”
Manoj has had a busy year, filled with streaming releases. He first appeared in the ZEE5 film 'Silence... Can You Hear It'? and then in the hotly-anticipated second season of the Amazon Prime Video series 'The Family Man'. A week later, he was seen in director Abhishek Chaubey's 'Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa', from the Netflix anthology 'Ray'. Dial 100 is his second ZEE5 film this year.
