Taaruk Raina on 'Mismatched 2': Playing differently abled was a challenge

New Delhi, Oct 16

'Mismatched' actor Taaruk Raina recently opened up about reprising his role as Anmol Malhotra in season 2. The series is based on Sandhya Menon's 2017 novel 'When Dimple Met Rishi' and was adapted by Gazal Dhaliwal and directed by Akarsh Khurana and Nipun Dharmadhikari.

On talking about reprising his role, he told IANS: "It's been a dream out and out, all this time I was just waiting to get back to it and when the day came, I was just ready. To get back into the skin just felt like muscle memory, so familiar, it felt like home. It's been a wild ride playing Anmol, all the ups and downs and the physicality of it."

Season 1 featured actors like Prajakta Koli, Rohit Saraf, Rannvijay Singha and Vidya Malvade in prominent roles. Taaruk also shared how his character has evolved in season 2.

"I think there's a lot more depth when it comes to my character this season, we dwell into the details of the reasons behind his trauma and the behaviour that results from it. There's also a human element this season to Anmol which wasn't there last season," he added.

When asked about the most challenging aspect of bringing this personality to screen, he shared that the toughest part was playing a differently abled character.

"I think the physical disability is definitely the most challenging part of it, to do it right and be able to do justice to it as it's a very sensitive space," he said.

The soundtrack for 'Mismatched' has been composed by Jasleen Royal, Samar Grewal, Anurag Saikia, Prateek Kuhad, Shashwat Singh, Taaruk Raina, Deepa Unnikrishnan, Abhijay Negi and Hiphop Bhaiya.

Taaruk, who has also composed, written, and sung for the series, briefed about his experience of composing music: I first played the song 'Kho Gaye' to our director Akarsh on a guitar at 4 a.m. on one of our off days, and he just told me 'I want you to do this song for the show' and I was just so so excited."

"I wrote this song from an incredibly personal and emotional space, as I was going through something similar in my life at the time too, and it just fit when I started writing with Dimple and Rishi in mind. I got together with my friend and music producer Himonshu Parikh to arrange and produce the song and it just came to life. I hope everyone connects with it," he said.

When asked what is closer to him, acting or music, he said: "It's extremely hard to choose, but I'd choose music only because I get to do it less than acting, and I'd love to do more if given the chance."

He continued: "I've been singing since I was 6 years old, my dad has been a massive influence on me as he used to be a musician as well, I used to sing in a band in school and college and then I started making and writing my own songs."

'Mismatched 2' is streaming on Netflix.