He is an intense actor who can go into the skin of the character at the snap of a second. The versatile actor Manoj Bajpayi who recently proved his mettle in Prakash Jha’s hit ‘Rajneeti’ is a prankster in real life and can fool any Tom, Dick and Harry. He may look serious with his easy demeanor and serious looks. But in reality he is an exact opposite of that.

A recent incident at the shoot of his upcoming film ‘Dus Tola’ confirms that. Producer Kunwar Pragny Arya prefers to call him ‘Naughty as a kid’ and recollects the incident for us. He says, “We were shooting back to back. Schedules were quite tight and we would wrap up the shoot late in night. The next day shoot would start by 9 AM so we all had to get up latest by 7.30 to reach the location. But on 3rd day of shoot, early in the morning at 6 AM somebody rang the bell, asking for laundry. We were baffled but sent him off, thinking it’s a genuine mistake. Entire day we were so sleepy on the sets. When we told Manoj, he was most sympathetic. But then every day somebody would ring the bell of our room at 6 in the morning and ask for laundry. Initially we ignored. However, when it continued for some days, we did our snooping around and found that Manoj had been setting this up every day to play a trick. Half of the artistes and technical team had to suffer through this prank. Later we all had a hearty laugh.”

Counters Manoj tongue in cheek, “It is very good for health to wake up early. I was just making sure that they all remain healthy.”