When Shabana Azmi complimented Pratik Gandhi on his performance in Scam 1992, saying it was the best performance she had seen in 20 years, the actor was in tears. He may have delivered many a hit in Gujarati, but he was still struggling to gain a foothold in Hindi cinema, until Hansal Mehta’s web series, based on the life of the late Harshad Mehta, changed his life for good. His nuanced portrayal of the controversial stockbroker made him an overnight sensation.
Pratik has since signed several big movies, all in the lead, including Mehta’s Dedh Bigha Zameen, and is also doing another big web series, Six Suspects, based on Vikas Swaroop’s book for Ajay Devgn’s production house. Above all, he is being compared to Manoj Bajpayee.
It took just one web series to propel him onto the centrestage as the new powerhouse of talent. With more than ten awards for one role already in the bag, life has literally begun at 40 for the Surat-born actor. That is what OTTs can do—providing good actors the widest possible screen across time zones, actors who would otherwise have been cast out as dispensable spare parts by mainstream Bollywood.
Pratik is not the only genuine talent to have lately benefited from the ongoing digital revolution that is transforming Indian cinema at various levels. Scores of gifted actors like him, who were earlier given a raw deal by a Bollywood dependent on frothy glamour, have found a level playing field to showcase their talent upon, a democratic platform forcing the hitherto smug film industry to look beyond the star system. Most of them have been around for several years, showing flashes of brilliance in past roles; now, they are the veritable rulers of a brave new entertainment world.
Take Pankaj Tripathi, for instance. The Bihar-born actor, now hailed as one of the most natural actors of his generation, toiled hard in the industry for 14 years, doing bit roles even after graduating from the National School of Drama (NSD). He finally made a mark with a National Award-winning performance in Newton (2017), but it was his foray later into the OTT universe with three web series in quick succession—Criminal Justice, Sacred Games and Mirzapur—that made his talent so patently compelling across living rooms.
Tripathi, last seen in the Kriti Sanon-starrer Mimi that premiered directly on a platform, says he is amazed at their phenomenal reach. “I get so many calls and messages from remote places across the world,” he exclaims. “Many of them keep calling me Kaleen Bhaiya, the character I played in Mirzapur.”
Mirzapur happened at the right time for Tripathi. It not only helped him show his vast range of acting skills, but also allowed him to escape the Bollywoodian vice of typecasting actors. The thriller, a tale of gang wars set in the badlands of eastern Uttar Pradesh, also threw up opportunities for younger actors such as Vikrant Massey, Ali Fazal and Divyenndu among others, which they all grabbed gleefully.
Massey, for one, had done television, short films and critically-acclaimed movies such as A Death In The Gunj (2017) and Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017), but it was primarily his roles in Mirzapur and Criminal Justice that catapulted him to the big league, getting him lead roles opposite the likes of Deepika Padukone in Chhapak (2020) and Taapsee Pannu in Haseen Dillruba (2021).
Ali Fazal, too, has had his share of eye-catching turns in movies like Fukrey (2013) and its sequel Fukrey Returns (2017), before he struck a purple patch on OTT platform with two back-to-back seasons of Mirzapur and, more recently, the Ray anthology. Mirzapur also gave a taste of stardom that had eluded Divyenndu earlier in Bollywood. The 38-year-old actor won over critics and audiences alike, playing Munna Tripathi.
“As an artiste, I always wanted to do something like that,” Divyenndu says about Mirzapur. “It sort of gives me a high that I have shown different shades of myself,” he says, adding that actors like him are lucky to have come around at a time when changes are taking place in terms of content in both films and web series. “I am very fortunate that we are at the right place at the right time. With the emergence of OTTs, you can have the best of both worlds,” he points out.
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One of the biggest success stories via the OTT route, of course, is that of Jaideep Ahlawat, a powerful actor who had been waiting in the wings ever since he impressed in Gangs of Wasseypur in 2012. In Paatal Lok, the 41-year-old delivered a riveting performance as a down-and-out cop, showing how sparsely Bollywood had used his talent.
Ahlawat says that though ‘content’ has been a buzzword in the entertainment industry for about a decade, it is web series that will take it to the next level—opening new avenues for actors to try new things. “You can tell your story on a global platform which helps you get a better perspective as an actor,” he says. “You also feel challenged to experiment new things.”
Paatal Lok also ‘rediscovered’ Neeraj Kabi. The 52-year-old veteran had been languishing with no work whatsoever for over 15 years after making his Bollywood debut in 1997. Though he got good opportunities with Ship of Theseus (2012) and Talvar (2015), it is web series such as Taj Mahal 1989, Paatal Lok and Avrodh: The Siege Within, that made him such a force to reckon with.
Kabi says that good actors are finally getting their due. “Content-driven films and authentic performances are being given a lot of preference,” he says. “It will grow further. Audience sensibilities have changed multifold over the past two-three years.”
For actors like Kabi, OTTs have given them a renown they have never tasted before. Sohum Shah says that though he had worked in acclaimed movies such as Ship of Theseus, Talvar and Tumbbad (2018), he had never received the kind of popularity that he got for the Maharani web series. “I grew up watching movies of Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan or Salman Khan in Sri Ganganagar. I dreamed about doing content like them to reach out to a large audience. It happened to me with a web series. For the first time, people called up from all over to say that I did a great job in Maharani,” he says.
The OTT boom has also helped actresses to break free from the shackles of stereotypical Bollywood and explore hitherto unchartered territories that lie in unexplored genres. Radhika Apte, Shefali Shah, Neena Gupta, Tisca Chopra, Rasika Duggal, Shweta Tripathi, Kubbra Sait, Sobhita Dhulipala, Sayani Gupta, Sheeba Chaddha and Kirti Kulhari are just some of the sought-after names in the OTT industry today. Actress Huma Qureshi believes that OTT is the future. “I think the kind of stories we are doing on this platform would not have found a place in the conventional theatre space,” she says.
Interestingly, the advent of OTT majors like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+Hotstar et al was initially thought to be a fresh avenue only for debutants, strugglers or, for that matter, actors past their prime. But web series originals made on a lavish scale such as Sacred Games and starring top actors like Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui set off the trend by underscoring its phenomenal reach and impact.
The OTT industry, of course, had a huge talent pool waiting to be tapped at its disposal, which not only had veterans like Kay Kay Menon and Atul Kulkarni but also young guns such as Vijay Varma and Jitendra Kumar.
Undeniably, OTT platforms have created a huge demand for good content, which in turn has opened new avenues for actors who are able to deliver. A young actor like Siddhant Chaturvedi, Bollywood’s new heartthrob who is now working with the best banners, first made a mark in a web series, Inside Edge (2017), which earned him a meaty role in Gully Boy (2019) and made him a star.
Little surprise then that Bollywood’s established big-screen stars such as Ajay Devgn and Shahid Kapoor are now doing web series without any qualms, while it has given a fresh lease of life to the careers of Abhishek Bachchan and Bobby Deol. Once labelled the ‘big bright hopes of the 70MM’, scions of famous Bollywood families have now latched on to OTT platforms to stay afloat in the entertainment industry, and without the trappings of stardom that once defined them.
Still, in the long run, they will be able to survive only if they have it in them the mettle to compete with an army of raw talent that has overrun the digital space. It is, after all, an actor’s paradise where it is talent, not pedigree, that counts.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Where The Phoenix Rises And New Stars Are Born")
