Gulshan Devaiah has given several praiseworthy performances in his decade long career, but it was OTT that gave him an opportunity to leave a lasting impression on his audience’s mind. From Duranga, Dahaad to Guns & Gulaabs and Blurr, the actor has been showing his versatility and being noticed. “I am of the opinion that when storytellers are empowered, it creates opportunities for actors. We on our own cannot do it. And OTT has done that as they have the scope to experiments and cater to different kinds of audiences. It has given more jobs to everyone including me,” the actor tells us.
OTT Tag
Besides success, doing back to back OTT projects might bring along the tag of an ‘OTT actor’, which at times may lead to stereotyping in the industry, But Devaiah remains unaffected by it. “These tags don’t bother me because I very well know that I am working on both mediums – cinema and OTT. And I don’t think even the industry people feel so because I am getting a lot of offers from both mediums. I am simultaneously doing films like Ulajh, Jhaansi Ka Rajkumaar etc,” shares the actor.
Devaiah accepts that there must be actors who have been affected by it, but he clarifies not being one of them. “I have never faced that. In fact, I had to turn down two big franchise films from the south because of some date issues. So OTT is definitely opening doors for me and working across mediums and industries,” he adds.
Number Game
While OTT is free of box office numbers and the pressure that comes with it, numbers do play a role on OTT in the form of views, meaning the number of people who have watched a particular project. Devaiah agrees that things have changed a lot and few years back, nobody talked about things like these. “But this would have happened sooner or later because how do you measure success on OTT otherwise?” he questions.
Devaiah does not mind it as he feels it’s the platforms’ way to “publicize and market the projects” and “gauge more attention”. He goes on to explain, “There are so many projects being made nowadays that everyone wants to try strategies to make their work stand out. I don’t subscribe to the game but I know this is how it will be played.”
Experimentation
Devaiah is enjoying challenging himself with characters he play on OTT and surprise his audience with the diversity. But he tell us that he would not like to “experiment just for the sake of it.” He says, “I have to be genuinely interested in it. For me, experimentation does not necessarily mean doing something that nobody has done before. It is about having a different interpretation of a character.”
He explains it with the example of his character of a cop named Devilal in Dahaad. “I had seen many actors having a certain body language and attitude while playing a cop. However, I thought that it’s just another job… it’s not a personality. What was important to me was to decode what kind of a person is Devilal because that will create an impact on the audience,” he says.
And that’s in fact what helped him get the role. “I asked Reema Kagti why she chose me and she said ‘because you were the only one who didn’t play cop like a cop in the audition.’ Same was with Atamaram (Guns and Gulaab). There must have been hundred other ways of playing that character, and it was my interpretation of it. That way, my whole career has been an experiment,” he ends.
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