Important for makers to exercise restraint: Rohit Bose Roy on OTT content

“After ‘Swabhimaan’, I saw girls jumping from buses to get a glimpse of me and I couldn’t handle that kind of craze especially for someone like me who came from a small city like Ahmedabad,” said Rohit Roy in an interview with Opoyi. The actor, who in one of his recent interviews said that he couldn’t resist the stardom after this much popular Mahesh Bhatt and Debaloy Dey directorial show in 1990s, is currently seen in ‘Paper’.

“I have always been a very honest and straightforward actor. During ‘Swabhimaan’, I was very young and I had no mentor, of course, I had Mahesh Bhatt, but you know when some show becomes so big especially when you are from a small city like Ahmedabad and you have not seen that glitz and glamour and appreciation, it gets little difficult,” he said.

“When you come from within the industry you have seen all this but I had no idea that this kind of madness can happen with me and that I think went to my head. I would not  read scripts and I started thinking that whatever I will do will work and that’s where the problem starts- when you start believing in yourself more than the big picture

“If I had somebody to guide me at that time, I would have taken it in a little more responsibly,” added Rohit.

Probably this is the reason why he says that “you have to continue doing your work with the same excitement, enthusiasm, and sincerity that you did in your first couple of shows that gave you the success in the first place .”

The actor currently nails it as a Scam Kingpin in his latest series “Paper” that is set in the retro era and is currently streamed at OTT platform ULLU. The series tracks the journey of one of the most unique scams in the history of India.

Talking about OTT as a medium in today’s time and if there needs to be self-regulation on it, he said, “It is up to the filmmaker to exercise restraint and not unnecessarily put in abuses or sex scenes or bold scenes or content of that kind because then you could not watch it with your family. Having said that, I would also say that because it is the filmmaker’s responsibility to show real stories, there are certain times when such scenes become intrinsic to a show but what I have problem is that when people forcefully put those scenes to titillate the audience.

“That is something I have clear reservations about,” he said

Citing the reason, he said, “filmmakers couldn’t express themselves freely and the moment they got OTT, they got this opportunity and they went crazy and that’s not the way it should be. It is also a question of responsibility and self-censorship.”

Talking about ‘Paper’, Rohit calls the project his most interesting work so far.

“This character is extremely challenging for me as I have not played this kind of character before. In fact, I was very nervous when I took up this role because I thought whether I will be able to pull it off as my character has got that Hyderabadi accent,” he said.

And for that accent, he had to go through training as well.

“For the first time, I kind of looked at people’s video of that part of the country. There was a tutor who used to teach me how to speak Hindi like a Hyderabad. We took many references like Marlon Brando’s character from ‘Godfather’ and the way he uses voice in that. I have tried my very best to do something like that and I feel that I have put in this effort and the audiences will be able to see me in new light and appreciate the effort,” he said.