Barun Sobti on leaving behind a successful TV career for OTT: ‘I had not worked for a while, so the idea was to switch’

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Talking about switching from romantic roles to more intense ones, Barun Sobti shared, “Your words don’t manifest into your future. There is a certain understanding I have of my skill set, but nobody is seeing that being delivered until someone takes a risk on you, and you start getting aligned with the subconscious of the industry. You say no to a million things, so there are only twenty things left for you to do. So those 20 things become the option then. Another thing that you do subconsciously is that you are aligning yourself basically with the universe. You send out messages about the kind of stuff you want to do and you will go out of the way if you have to, even sit back home for half a decade but do a certain kind of work. That message goes out loud and clear as long as you are worth it.”

Barun left behind a thriving TV career to enter the OTT space when it was at a nascent stage in India. The actor said he was inspired by the work done in the West and was “secretly hoping that the same thing would happen in India as well.”

“I had not worked for a while, so the idea was to switch. India tends to ape the West every decade. So when the OTT revolution started, I was kind of secretly hoping that the same thing would happen in India as well. It was going toward that place, so I hoped it would go big and I get to ride it successfully because there was terrific stuff happening in the West at that time.”

Agreeing with the fact that his TV career ended quite abruptly, Barun added, “It was a huge deal when I had quit television. Everyone was like it is the biggest area to learn more, and it is a fact. I was making truckloads of money at that time and I just abruptly stopped. I sat back home and did nothing for a long time, then I got lucky with OTT stuff. It was a very carefully crafted career path.”

When asked what made him take such a huge risk, he explained, “I took a huge financial risk when one day I said that I don’t need you guys to keep transferring me money. But it depends on how far you want to take your creative path. You can either sit on loads of money, keep smelling the currency, or see how far can you take your creativity. So yes, you do have to take risks. I have a very supportive family. My wife has been by my side through the whole thing. She has similar sensibilities. If I have to take on work that doesn’t make me happy, she is the first one to tell me not to do it. If I would have gone on doing the same thing with that kind of money, I would be in a very different income group today. But with my career path, I was trying to tell something else. I was trying to say that there is going to be a time in my life when what I am doing is going to be relevant to the whole nation.”

Barun Sobti even briefly tried his luck in the movies, and that did not come to fruition as expected. So when he was asked why the film industry doesn’t prefer well-established names from the TV industry, the actor said, “It is not like that, especially being Indians, the more the masala, the more edible a conversation is for us. It just has to do with the fact that it is a number game. For everything you have to prove your worth. I have so many filmmakers who are absolutely in love with my craft, but the point is, I am not the kind of name right now that is bringing the audience to the theatre. Everyone is doing it for their business, it is nothing to be taken personally.”

Workwise, there is a promising lineup in place for Barun. While he shares that a new season of Asur is being written, he adds that there are more web shows in the pipeline this year. Sharing a list of his upcoming projects, Barun said, “I am working hard. Next I have done a show for SonyLIV, it is called Raat Jawaan Hai. It is a very quirky take on coming-of-age parenting. There are two more shows we are looking at coming out this year. One is a period drama called Donali and the other one is called Bawandar. It is a political drama, again very coming-of-age.”