Ashiesh Roy in SAB TV's Maniben.com..

If you find actor Ashiesh Roy with a huge smile plastered on his face these days, he has a justifiable reason for it. "It is not everyday that an actor gets to play a character immortalized by the king of comedy Mehmood saab!", enthused Ashiesh.

Contiloe Films, which is producing the popular sitcom Maniben.com for SAB TV starring Smriti Irani, were searching for an actor to play a south Indian music teacher along the lines of Mehmood saab's character in the film Padosan. "Rajan sir (Wagdhare), the director suggested my name to them," informs Ashiesh.

"I had played a south Indian film director in one of his sitcoms years ago with Bhagyashree, and I guess, he must have thought I could do justice to the role in Maniben. We had a blast shooting the episodes".

Being a Bengali, wouldn't he have preferred doing Kishore Kumar's character from Padosan? "If I had played it, everyone would have said that being a Bengali it would have been easy for me to do it, which would have been wrong anyway since Kishore da was brilliant in that character. Besides, I had already played that character in last year's ITA Awards. Playing a Tamilian and paying homage to Mehmood saab was double the challenge," smiled Ashiesh.

The episodes featuring Ashiesh Roy will air from next Tuesday on Sab TV.