Devas Dikshit traces the beginning of his craft to a moment so small it almost feels mythical now — three years old in his village courtyard, mimicking an uncle whose flaring nostrils amused him endlessly, making his grandmother laugh until she called the whole family to watch. That joy of imitation stuck; while other kids copied heroes, he copied the people around him, unknowingly building an instinct for observation. College’s nukkad nataks made him realise performance wasn’t just fun — it felt like home — pulling him from journalism into Delhi’s theatre world.
There he finally understood, as he puts it, “There’s a big difference between mimicry and acting — you need imagination, literature, motivation and honesty.” Theatre disciplined him; FTII refined him further. “FTII taught me to be present and that acting is more than reciting lines. What the character does even behind the scenes — when not on stage — is important,” Devas says.
When he talks about his process today, he says he never chases parts. “Roles choose you. Auditions are just a window; the script is the real person you meet.” His preparation always begins there — breaking down behaviour across the arc, joining his own emotional reality with the character’s inner logic. That’s what he brings now to Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas, where he promises nothing ornamental. “I don’t believe in caricature and theatrics. I believe in lived emotions,” he claims. His signature subtlety comes from real life.
“People don’t make big expressions every minute. Stillness has its own language. The camera sees what you’re feeling even if you don’t have to move,” Devas shares. To stay sharp, he watches people constantly — how they bargain, how they walk, get annoyed. For every role, he researches deeply. He says, “For Raid, I studied homosexuality; for Special Ops, I spent a week in a red-light area to notice how people behave; for Chhapaak, I met acid attack survivors to understand their emotional landscape.”
Roles choose you. Auditions are just a window; the script is the real person you meetDevas Dikshit
He wants to do everything — drama, comedy, tragedy, patriotic stories — “anything except propaganda,” he says firmly. Though Devas chooses characters and the value that they bring over working with big names, he still has some dreams. He hopes that one day he will get to work with Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bhardwaj, Shoojit Sircar, Raam Reddy and though his wish to act alongside the legendary Om Puri cannot be fulfilled anymore, Devas hopes that he gets to do a scene with Amitabh Bachchan.
Outside of acting, he loves to do many things, especially cooking. “The way you mix spices and you put in effort and attention to make a dish is how you build a character,” he says, drawing a connection between cooking and acting. He gardens, boxes, dances, sings, watches everything and lives a rhythm of creativity whether the camera is rolling or not.
Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas is streaming on Zee5
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