Omi Vaidya Recalls The Days When He Worked In The Office With Steve Carell (Photo Credit – Omi Vaidya/Twitter;Imdb)
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Who can forget Chatur from 3 Idiots played by Omi Vaidya? It was a side character but became a cult in no time. Even today when we hear his speech and dialogues, it makes us laugh like crazy. “Jokes and accent ka sahi istemaal toh koi inse seekhe”
After 3 Idiots, he was also seen in Madhur Bhandarkar’s comedy film Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji also starring Ajay Devgn & Emraan Hashmi. He worked in Desi Boyz in the same year followed by films like Players & Jodi Breakers. Since then he hasn’t been active in Bollywood but acted in a mini TV series Metro Park.
But do you know, before doing 3 Idiots, Omi was also seen in the cult American sitcom, The Office? As the talented actor is busy promoting the season 2 of Metro Park he talked about playing Sadiq, an IT guy in the show back in 2005-2007.
In a conversation with News 18, Omi Vaidya said, “When you shoot something, even 3 Idiots or The Office, you don’t know that it is going to be a classic. You just do it with your hundred per cent. Maybe Metro Park too, in five or ten years, will be a classic. But shooting The Office was a very enjoyable experience for me. It was early on in my career, before 3 Idiots and it allowed me to realise that I had something special. I was able to get the role of Sadiq over many other well-known actors in the business. Steve Carell wasn’t a big name back then. When I shot there that was when the ratings of the show were starting to go up. Everyone was actually wondering if they would even get renewed. They thought maybe they would get cancelled. They were just these actors who were hoping to breakthrough.”
Talking about working with Steve Carell, he said, “I remember Steve Carell was really nice. We didn’t do any rehearsals, we just started shooting. I had no idea what was going on. When we were shooting he would just say random things and I was so focused on the character that it didn’t sound very funny to me. But Steve was just ad-libbing little things here and there. There were some extra scenes that I was in that were edited out for the time that you can watch in the DVD version which is really funny. The weirdest part was when you work in an office, everybody looks like they’re working but they’re actually on YouTube or something. That’s what it was like. Everybody in the background was really just fooling around. SO it was like being in a real office. And it was such a subtle show compared to a lot of other comedies. It was really fun to do something like that. And it was one of the first depictions of Sikh people on American television. So every time I remember that, or 3 Idiots, or Metro Park, I know that I have a lot of versatility. I just have to either develop my own projects or wait for new filmmakers with great visions.”
