Danish Sait took great pride in introducing Vijay Chendoor as Humble Politiciann Nograj’s Manjunath

The writer-turned-comedy actor reminisces about attending Danish’s birthday party, where his character, Manjunath, became the talking point.

Vijay Chendoor

Today, Vijay Chendoor is close to 25 films old as an actor. But not many know that Vijay came into the Kannada film industry as a writer and filmmaker, whose acting career began purely by chance, when the actor didn’t turn up. The film, Swayamkrishi, was a box office disaster, but actor Yash, who’d known Vijay as a writer for his film Rocky, recommended him for a role in Lucky, which kickstarted his acting trajectory. While he has been a part of multiple projects and worked with Ganesh, Krishna Ajai Rao, Rakshit Shetty, Prajwal Devaraj, etc. one that gave him a wider fan base, undoubtedly, is Humble Politiciann Nograj, the 2018 film starring Danish Sait in the lead.

In the Saad Khan directed film, Vijay played Manjunath, Nograj’s trusted personal assistant, who, until then was only an imaginary character that Danish would address in his skits. With the film, Vijay became Manjunath, whom Danish took great pride in introducing to all his RCB (Royal Challengers Bangalore) buddies. “After we’d worked on the film, I was once invited to Danish’s birthday party, where I noticed that his close circle included all those people who have been with him through the years, be it from radio, Improv shows, etc. There the only familiar face I saw was that of Prajwal Devaraj. The rest were the who’s who of the RCB team, Bengaluru’s social circle, and a few names from Bollywood, and as I stood in one corner, Danish came up to me, and personally took me to each of them asking, ‘Do you know who this is?’ and they all answered, ‘Manjunath’, as they’d seen me in the trailer,” says Vijay.

The actor has now returned to the role with the 10-episode web show Humble Politiciann Nograj, which is streaming on Voot Select currently.

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