TP Mishra is so annoying: The Office actor Gopal Datt

TP Mishra is based on Dwight Schrute, a paper salesman, who takes his German ancestors very seriously and is paranoid of technology and most things urban. Here at The Office, which is set in Faridabad, Mishra is a firm believer in swadeshi, speaks chaste Hindi and has an admirable dedication towards wrestling.

Datt, who grew up in Nainital, never thought of cinema or acting. “Sure, I liked films, but the sole access I had was of those aired on Doordarshan on weekends. On and off, I went to the rehearsals of a local theatre group Yugmanch. They were very good back then and even today they produce decent plays. An actor in the group was absent one day and they asked me to read a part. And somehow I got hooked,” says Datt, who is a National School of Drama graduate. He was there from 1996 to 1999.

NSD was a turning point for him, as it opened Datt to the nerve centre of Indian theatre. “I got to act in plays by Nirmal Pandey and Ankur ji. My classmates were people like Neeraj Sood and Heeba Shah. Doing theatre is like putting oneself in a laboratory where you conduct experiments on yourself,” he says.

Datt made his debut in Bollywood in 2001, with Mujhe Kuch Kehna Hai, and then followed it up with Tere Naam (2003). But it has taken a while to be a lead character in a show. “After these two films, where I had incidentally essayed the role of the hero’s friend, I only got calls to play hero ka dost. That’s when I turned wholeheartedly to theatre,” he says.

Though Datt struggled in Mumbai initially, the satire show The Week That Wasn’t helped pay the bills (he worked with them for about 10 years ). “I was really proud to be a part of it. It felt that one was actually a part of something bigger. It’s been going strong for so long.”

With The Viral Fever and All India Bakchod, Datt became a household name with millennials. “TVF was just getting started and I was offered to play Rastogi in TVF Pitchers. Five years ago, the digital space was like an underground movement, where people were writing in one corner of a room, editing was happening on one system, everyone was pooling their resources and it was all hands on deck kind of thing. Now we are a part of an international syndicate,” says Datt, who essays the role of a cop, Sudhir, in the drama series Delhi Crime. The role was a surprise because it broke away from his usual genre of comedy. “That’s the kind of role I want to do, where people are shocked and say, ‘Yeh yahan kya kar raha hai’,” says Datt, who incidentally will be playing a cop again in his next Hindi film, Jabariya Jodi.