Deven Bhojani: ‘We are nobody to judge the audience’

His mere mention evokes either a smile or a chuckle After all Deven Bhojani has served some of the funniest and most heartwarming moments to his audience on screen in a career spanning over three decades However going by the visual assets of his upcoming show Black White and GraymdashLove Kills the actor is set to create a new visual imagery for himselfmdashone that is raw intense and grey Gearing up for the release of the SonyLIV crime drama Bhojani speaks to midday about OTT offering him a new dimension to acting the exhaustion he experienced while delivering blockbuster shows on television and his plans for direction in the near futureEdited excerpts from the interviewWhat convinced you to come on board this gritty showThere was no reason for me to say no to this Whenever producer Hemal Thakkar who is an old friend from my theatre days and I do some new project we just call up each other to ask what the other person thinks about it He briefed me on the concept of this show and said there was a role for me in it We met with the director Pushkar Mahabal and the creative team who then narrated the story to me in detail They were a little sceptical whether I would agree because it did not have a lot of screen time and I have been on television where I have mostly played lead characters However I am someone who looks at the meat of the character not the length I have never played such a kind of a character beforeThe work you have done on OTT so farmdashScoop Taaza Khabar and now Black White and Graymdashspeaks much about your versatility and the variety of roles offered to you Do you feel that creators on OTT view you differently from the kind of work you are known forYes definitely I wanted to explore OTT for the longest time That is why for the last threeandahalf years I stopped doing television because doing a daily soap and an OTT show together was next to impossible Thankfully I started getting offers and have done a variety of roles already As an actor I am like a kid in a candy store In television shows go on for some time Like Baa Bahoo Aur Baby wherein I played Gattu went on for five to six years Of course it was enriching I loved the process and the popularity But then I was stuck After a point it becomes a little monotonous whereas on OTT a showrsquos shoot goes on for two or four months at most I am doing this middleaged love story where I played the lead I have also just finished shooting a film where I play a reporter I have done a lot of theatre work with Hemal So they know my capacity as an actor how versatile I am and I am not restricted to only doing comedy That is why they dared to cast me for this characterHow did you break the monotony of doing similar rolesLuckily in the case of Sarabhai vs Sarabhai my character Dushyant became iconic Memes on him go viral even after 20 years of the show Besides acting I was also the director on that show It was timeconsuming and taxing Similarly in Baa Bahoo Aur Baby I was also the creative director of the show So at a point I had to tell the writers on both the shows to write less for the characters of Gattu and Dushyant Even if the TRP increases with Gattu and Dushyant coming in the scene donrsquot put them so much that the audience gets tired As an actor I got to break the monotony of playing the same character repeatedly Some days I would shoot and some days I would be there just as a creative director I took a break after it to study filmmaking from USC University of Southern California In my class there were directors from different parts of the world It helped me break the monotony of my lifeYou were part of the golden age of television Do you feel TV has regressed since thenYou are right to an extent but the audience is there for every kind of entertainment So it is very subjective We are nobody to judge anyone even the audience People are making those shows because they are getting a good audience and TRPs so why not The moment TRPs go down they shut the show ruthlessly sometimes That is how it works There is nothing wrong with itDo you feel actors who excel at comedy are not always considered great actors and there is a biasIt is sad that people think that I fail to understand why because comedy is the most difficult thing to doWhen Deven Bhojani is not just an actor Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander 1992 actor Assistant director Sarabhai vs Sarabhai 200406 Actor Director Creative director Baa Bahoo Aur Baby 200510 Actor Creative director Commando 2 2017 DirectoratOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params