Despite actor Rajiv Surendra’s scene-stealing moments in Mean Girls, he is been largely absent from Hollywood for the reason that movie’s launch in 2004. So what occurred to the man who performed Kevin Gnapoor? Turns out, Surendra’s journey is fairly fascinating.
Surendra is healthier recognized lately for DIY movies on HGTV’s YouTube channel than appearing credit. Part of the rationale could possibly be due to the “traumatic” rejection he confronted lacking out on Life of Pi. He dropped out of school in hopes to get the starring function within the 2012 movie, nevertheless it in the end went to Indian actor Suraj Sharma.
“I felt dead inside for a long time,” he defined to GQ.
Surendra, who shot Mean Girls throughout his first yr of school, realized the ebook Life of Pi was being become a movie.
“I was determined to get that part. So I dropped out of college to go to the little town in India where the book takes place so that I could do some in-depth research. I did that for a few months and came back and was just waiting for them to start production. I assumed that it was going to happen any day now and it didn’t. They lost their director and the project ended up getting put on hold so I went back to college,” he recalled. The challenge saved getting delayed, and unexpectedly, six years glided by.
“Life of Pi was attached to four different directors over the years so every time a new director [came aboard], I’d go to the library and get out all the movies they had made and research that director. I worked really really hard to try to get this part. In the end, they gave it to somebody else,” he defined.
Surendra stated that rejection “felt like someone had died.”
“I was building this boy that was a character in a book. By the end of those years, that was a real person inside of me. Those old Tamil songs I listened to as a kid, Pi would’ve listened to those songs. When I got the email saying I didn’t get the part, I felt like that person just died instantly. It was traumatic. I think I was in shock for a couple weeks. I felt dead inside for a long time,” he continued.
Surendra does not have one other main credit score since Mean Girls. The solely credit score, per IMDb, is showing in a brief in 2005. After dropping out on Life of Pi, he utilized for an everyday workplace job, however working in a cubicle beneath the fluorescent lights “wasn’t for me.”
“I can’t do this. I’d rather not be here on earth,” he stated.
“In that period of feeling dead inside and knowing I couldn’t work in an office, I peripherally heard about this thing called being an Au Pair, where a young person would be hired as a nanny for kids in Europe. I thought maybe this would be the one thing that would excite me. I also just wanted to leave my life. It felt like a way to escape and to be paid. I applied on a website and I got it, so I moved to Munich,” he continued.
Ultimately, that did not work out both. “Excuse me, you paid to spend four years to get your degree and now you’re washing someone’s underwear? What?” he quipped.
Surendra determined to start out a small enterprise doing calligraphy. He additionally did a pottery apprenticeship and has began to discover a following on-line.
“Overall I find the ultimate question people need to ask themselves is: What do I want? And they need to come up with that answer on their own. In a very deep way,” he stated. “When you figure that out, it actually is simple to achieve it but it means you have to let go of a lot of things.”
The entrepreneur acknowledges living considerably unconventionally means there is a trade-off.
“I don’t have medical insurance. People always ask, well aren’t you scared? And I say, not really. It’s always a trade-off. I know the cost that is associated with that security. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be miserable on a daily basis so I can have medical insurance,” he stated. “To me, it’s like what’s the point? What’s the point in having the security of a job, an apartment, and insurance and then everyday you come home and hate your life. So you can have three weeks off a year so you can do something fun?”
So do not count on to see Surendra in Mean Girls 2, if that ever comes round: “Why ruin a good thing?” he stated.