City youth shares screen with Khiladi

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, August 5

City youth Navnayak Roanta has shared the silver screen with Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar in the upcoming Hindi flick, ‘Gold’, which will hit the cinema houses on August 15.

In the movie, Navnayak Roanta is performing the role of an Anglo-Indian named Percy Pinto, who is a hockey player of the 1948 team, which won a gold medal in the Olympics in London.

Talking to Bathinda Tribune, Navnayak said, “I would like to say that we all are really excited for our upcoming movie as Akshay Kumar has a huge fan following and director Reema Kagti has made some brilliant hit movies. ‘Gold’ is a period-sports film that is set around the time India was about to get its independence from the British.”

It is a fictionalised version of the Indian Field Hockey team’s historic win at the 1948 Olympics. Fittingly, India beat Great Britain in the finals quite convincingly by 4-0 to clinch the gold medal, one year after the Independence, he said.

Speaking about his work experience with Bollywood star Akshay Kumar, he said it was great working with him and he had learnt a lot during the shooting. He said Akshay made everyone very comfortable for the shoot as during free time they all used to play cricket with him.

Navnayak said, “It was a great moment for me when I got selected in the audition for the movie. Then I underwent three-month hockey training in Mumbai and one-month training in England for the movie.”

The three-month shooting of the movie was held in England and one month in various parts of India. Even some scenes were shot at YPS School in Patiala.

It is pertinent to mention that before doing this movie, Navnayak had done a cameo in Hindi movie ‘Ragini MMS 2’, tele ads and TV serials, but now with this break, he is set to fly higher and he has even got some new Hindi movie projects as well, the shooting of which will start in the coming months.

Navnayak had his schooling at YPS in Patiala. Later, his family shifted to Bathinda and he joined St Paul’s High School in 2005. Later, he went to Mumbai for his higher studies where he entered the acting industry. His parents are running a playway school in Bathinda in the name of Daddy’s Teddy Play School at Jujhar Singh Nagar.