Shahid Kapoor’s streaming debut Farzi comes after Bollywood has already invaded the OTT space; do movie stars deserve praise for doing TV anymore?

This week, Shahid Kapoor will make his grand streaming debut with the Prime Video series Farzi. Created by The Family Man’s hit-making duo Raj and DK, the crime-comedy arrives at a time when it movie stars doing television is no longer something that would make their agents and managers quit in protest.

For the longest time, for a movie star to do TV (and then streaming) was seen as an admission of defeat. Only actors whose careers had taken a nosedive would agree to doing television, but A-list stars would never even think about making the move. This perception was encouraged by repeated instances of television actors graduating to movies, further imprinting on the audiences’ mind that one was more desirable than the other. Shah Rukh Khan is easily the biggest name to emerge from TV. Of course, for the entirety of its existence, television has been the more affordable alternative to films, which means that the industry invariably has less money to invest in projects and talent.

Also read | Anurag Kashyap says Netflix backed out of producing Maximum City, ‘policy changes’ post-Tandav caused Paatal Lok 2 to be stalled

In India, like in Hollywood, there have been a few outliers — Naseeruddin Shah played Mirza Ghalib on TV; Neena Gupta fully transitioned to a career in television after spending several years in the film industry; Shashi Kapoor made a guest appearance on an NBC adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels; Kabir Bedi became a star in Europe after appearing in the Italian miniseries Sandokan. But you’d never hear of true-blue stars like Govinda or Rishi Kapoor appearing on TV. And while all three Khans have done TV shows, they’ve made sure to restrict themselves to the reality/documentary zone; there’s a difference between playing yourself on the small screen and playing a character. Just as there’s a difference between doing a streaming series and a streaming movie.

It became increasingly common for Indian stars to do shows after the arrival of streaming platforms in the country. Vivek Oberoi took a starring role in Prime Video’s Inside Edge, but his career wasn’t quite what it used to be. Things really changed when Saif Ali Khan signed on to star in Netflix’s Sacred Games, and the show ended up becoming an actual hit.

This opened the door for Emraan Hashmi to do Bard of Blood, Bobby Deol to star in Aashram, and Madhuri Dixit to lead The Fame Game. Madhuri is perhaps the highest-profile female Indian movie actor to headline streaming projects; last year, she also starring in Prime Video’s Maja Ma. Her male equivalent is probably Ajay Devgn, who led Hotstar’s remake of Luther, titled Rudra: The Edge of Darkness.

Aside from the lower pay and the bad optics, what kept movie actors away from television in the past was probably also the long-time commitment. Which is why two trailblazers need to be credited for breaking these taboos more than anyone else. In 2014, Amitabh Bachchan capitalised on the career turnaround that Kaun Banega Crorepati had afforded him by signing on to star in Sony’s drama-thriller Yudh. But a year before that, Anil Kapoor became the first major Bollywood star to lead a television show with his Hindi remake of the American series 24.

The streaming industry has also produced stars of its own, like Paatal Lok’s Jaideep Ahlawat, Netflix’s favourite Radhika Apte, and Mirzapur actor Pankaj Tripathi. Some, like Manoj Bajpayee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, became even bigger than they already were after starring in major streaming projects.

Story continues below this ad

Hollywood has had a similar trajectory. While there were always outliers like Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, who both appeared in the HBO miniseries Angels in America before making big streaming debuts with Hunters and Big Little Lies, respectively, TV was considered inferior to films. The equivalent of the Yudh/24 era over there was when Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson starred in HBO’s True Detective, whose later seasons featured Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams and Mahershala Ali.

But there was no turning back after the arrival of streaming. Netflix’s first ever show, House of Cards, became what it did initially because it starred a proper Oscar-winning star — Kevin Spacey — and was spearheaded by the legendary David Fincher. Since then, everyone from George Clooney (Catch-22), Jude Law (The Young Pope), Kate Winslet (Mildred Pierce, Mare of Easttown), Julia Roberts (Homecoming, Gaslit), Emma Stone (Maniac), John Travolta and Penelope Cruz (American Crime Story), Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway (WeCrashed), Harrison Ford (1923) and even Dwayne Johnson (Ballers) have dipped their toes in television/streaming.

MCU stars such as Chris Evans (Defending Jacob), Chris Pratt (The Terminal List), Jeremy Renner (Mayor of Kingstown), Tom Holland (The Crowded Room), and Robert Downey Jr (The Sympathizer) are all doing long-form projects outside of the franchise. That being said, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Scarlett Johansson, and Leonardo DiCaprio have stayed away from television shows, even though they’ve done several streaming movies between them.

With both Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra poised to make their streaming debuts in the coming months, the lines between the movie and TV industries will blur even further.

From the homepage