‘I wanted to tell simple but impactful stories’: Vikrant Massey on co-producing Musafir Cafe

6 min readJul 25, 2026 09:27 AM IST First published on: Jul 25, 2026 at 09:27 AM IST Within months of acquiring the rights to Divya Prakash Dubey’s novel Musafir Cafe, writer-creator Sharanya Rajgopal had already found her Chander. There was just one hiccup: Vikrant Massey had become one of the most sought-after actors in the country after the phenomenal success of 12th Fail (2023). “When I approached his agent, the response was, ‘You can’t afford him’,” Rajgopal recalls, with a laugh. Not only did Massey eventually agree to play the protagonist, he also came on board as co-producer. “I wanted to produce stories beyond the work we were already doing. Musafir Cafe felt like the perfect fit. It was a natural extension of what I wanted to do through Homemade Stories (his production company) —