The world, especially India, might have just woken up to the power of OTT and the digital spectrum but actor Amol Parashar was a digital star long before Bollywood’s biggest names stepped into the game. It’s no surprise then that despite having delivered a fantastic performance in Shoojit Sircar’s Sardar Udham and in Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare, his fans and followers still refer to him as Chitvan Sharma, the character he portrayed in TVF Tripling. In an exclusive conversation with Filmfare, Amol opens up about the response to Sardar Udham and the power of OTT.
After Udham Singh, you have been receiving some great reviews and some fantastic responses on social media – what’s your frame of mind right now? How are you feeling?
I am quite happy. Naturally, when you work on something and put your mind and body into something . . . as actors we try to do that in everything that comes our way. But you know, there are so many other things that have to come together and I think in this case, what people have pointed out is that although I had a very limited screen time, when you see the film in its totality and everything comes together, it has a certain impact. Then, you can feel that you have left an impact on people and made them feel something or people have enjoyed watching you and your character and I think that you need this kind of thing every once in a while. Every few months or every year, you need that once in a while, you know, so that you are motivated to do new things – to do better.
98 per cent of Sardar Udham has Vicky Kaushal in it on account of him portraying the main character. Did you expect your performance to stand out?
I was always told by the team that this is an impactful part of the film. I, of course, was not there when the rest of the film was being shot. So, I had a rough idea about what the film is and what the story is. But you also learn to just do a job and not really think about the fruits of your labour. So although there were people, Sir you know, this is going to have an Even when we were shooting, there was a lot of positive feedback and encouragement from everybody, like Shoojit sir and Vicky, they were all like ‘wow, this scene came out so well’ and you know, ‘this guy is bringing something to the table’. Of course, at that moment you are just trying to please your director like anybody else. As an experience of watching this film as an audience, I loved it so much that the fact that I am part of it, that I am in it is itself a thing of pride. So you can’t really predict what the reaction is going to be. I was so blown away by the film that I was just happy to be there, for my name to be there (laughs) and that I am attached to something like this.
What a lot of people have said about Sardar Udham is that it was dealt with very differently as compared to other patriotic films that have been released…
So, this was always discussed, especially in those scenes with my character. They already shot the rest of the film and then these were the last days of shoot, the Bhagat Singh scenes. Shoojit Sircar had underlined to me and I had already appreciated the idea that he had in mind – that he wanted to portray them as real human beings, which is what they were, they were real human beings. What tends to happen with historical films is that we take two-three ideas and then we put them on a pedestal. They become like superhuman people but when you can feel that they were also real human beings, faced with real choices and it’s just that they’re brave enough or courageous enough to make those choices and that doesn’t mean that you know, every day of your life is easy and you are the hero every day. You have to go through a lot of pain. So, the hero is not the guy who doesn’t feel pain, according to me and according to the film. These are not the people who didn’t feel pain, these are people who felt pain and despite that, they did what they did and I think that is an important distinction that we must make about historical films because otherwise, you know, you get dissociated from their ideas.
Nowadays, a lot of people are realising the power of OTT and the digital space but you’ve always been a digital darling, so to say.
I think most of the work I do now and most of whatever I have done professionally has come to me from this medium. I did my first web show in 2016 when it was not even acknowledged as a medium. By 2017 and 2018, it was ‘oh! this is OTT’. But I don’t think the word ‘OTT’ had been coined in 2016 when I did the first season of my first show. And we’ve seen it grow crazily, which has gone wild to a certain extent. I had already called it in 2016. Everyone was like ‘where do you stream?’ I was like ‘nobody has any idea, let me tell you that this is going to explode, this is going to explode in a very big manner and I think this will explode’. We are just in the middle of that explosion because a lot of platforms are still coming in with a lot of muscle and confidence and which means that when they see something, they still see a possibility of growth in this medium. What it has done for people like me and many others, not just actors but also writers and directors, is that it has actually opened the widest playgrounds of stories right now. This medium actually has the largest variety right now, on what people are willing to watch, on what people are willing to make, what people are willing to be a part of and this is just what we never imagined, five years ago. Now, what’s happening is, I think there are more ideas than people. This is something that I can say honestly because this is a problem that people are facing now, they have good ideas but how do you get people to come on board because everybody is busy with fifty things? Now I am hearing from my director friends ki actors nahi mil rahe hai or actors hai lekin jitne bhi hai vo sab occupied ho gaye hain. That is something I don’t think anybody would have imagined five years ago. I think the only way to sustain it is that the spirit shouldn’t go away because sometimes, when I read like 10 stories back to back and if they all start sounding similar to me, then I’ll get a little worried. Then I think – is this also going down the same path when everything is becoming a derivative of each other.
