Mentalist Akshay Laxman joined NewsX for an exclusive interview as a part of NewsX India A-list. In the interview, he opened up about his journey, viral video with Nora Fatehi and much more. Read excerpts:
Speaking about his magic act with Nora Fatehi and the viral video, Akshay explained, “I would tease a doll with some electric current or something like that and Nora would feel it. She would feel the electric current on her body, so that was the idea. The basic act is where I touch someone on the shoulder and someone else feels it. We wanted to take a step forward and think of how can we make it something more authentic.”
When asked about the hard work that goes behind going viral on social media, he said, “A lot of people think that luck just happens to you with you doing nothing and that’s not how it works. Anybody who is being lucky , if you notice there is something common in everyone. They were good at something and someone knew that they existed. Like someone who could use them, knew they existed. Now, if you want to increase your luck or increase your chances, you have to make sure more and more know about you. This is what you do, you are good at it and you would be at service at any point. You are the master of this one thing. I think luck has got to do a lot with your own positivity and optimism when it comes to giving those vibes to people. In the corporate industry as well, I make sure that once my show is done, people come to me. I don’t shun them off, I don’t shut them out. You need to be great at something or master of something and make sure people know about you. That is all there is to, when it come to luck. When it comes to being viral, for example, I must have put out at least 20 or more videos with celebrities out there, which includes Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Raju Hirani, Sanjay Dutt, Vidya Balan. I have been putting those for years now, and it is not like they are some grainy cell phone videos. They are proper high-definition good, good sounding videos but this is the one that stuck a chord with people because Nora in today’s date is more relevant with the youth, with the social media world, so it just stuck a chord with them, right place at right time.”
Further delving into what is it like to be popular and the trolling that comes with it, he said, “If you go on my video ever, you type Nora Fatehi, Askshay Laxman on Instagram, you see a video, you read the comments. Most of the comments say “scripted”, “scripted”, “scripted”, “this is scripted” “Cut 50 rupees for acting”. There are memers and trollers, which I am okay with, then there are people who are guessing how the trick had been done. There are giving various suggestions. I am okay with that as well. What I am not okay with, is where people turn it into something religious. Not any particular religion, just religious or call it black magic because it is none of that.”
