Yes, and props to Sandip for not just casting him but choosing other 'regional' actors for key roles.
@bold I love the way you phrased this.
I hope this encourages not just actors to try but also for writers and PHs to hire actors based on their craft, not their location, and then give them good scripts.
The thing is, there are very few good ML roles written for ITV so I understand actors from the South not wanting to say yes to crappy scripts and preferring to work on quality stuff in the south. Why go for mediocre when you can go for the best.
I think Sai's advantage is also that because he's multilingual he can continue to work in Hindi projects (series, TV, films), especially after so many people discovered him on MHRW, where his character allowed him to showcase a wide spectrum of emotions. Future casting directors can just look at his work on the show and see how good he is!
I always said this show has casting perfect to the T. Every character feels authentic and real as they are acting the roles which is native of their own culture it boils my blood how any ITV show with Marathi culture of South culture is done by north indian actors and how they failed to portray the characters authentically and failed with their accents also. YHM failed with Ishita's South culture where her acting never made me feel that she is a Tamil woman and GHKKPM where the leads casted are all North actors and how they fail to portray Marathi characters. In contrast see how good Gashmeer Mahajani is in Imlie . He is an authentic Marathi actor from Pune side and still has that accent when speaking Hindi but in the show how well he portray himself in the role of UP guy living in Delhi. This is called acting.