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8 months ago
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EXCLUSIVE: Emraan Hashmi was born to play Raghu Khanna. As a member of the famous Bhatt family who began a two-decade career in Bollywood behind the cameras before becoming a famous face in front of them, playing the son of a media mogul in Disney+ Hotstar‘s latest original will have been familiar territory.
His role as Raghu Khanna in Showtime has indeed led him to lean into personal experience. “When I first read the synopsis, which was just an idea set in the world of Bollywood and glitz at that point, I was intrigued,” he says. “I’ve had the experience in the industry for almost 25 years. I started off as an assistant director in 2001, before I made my film debut in 2003. I thought I could bring that experience to the table. I might not have been fully fledged producer, but as actor I have good rapport with them. Subconsciously, my experiences bleed into my character.
“There are lots of dynamics in producing films, from the inception to shooting and releasing and it is nothing less than a mammoth task. I might not be in sync with how international industries work, but when I saw the show Entourage a long while back I thought how it’s not very different to Bollywood.
“In any film business the dynamics are the same — Bollywood or Hollywood. It’s very cutthroat. The whole idea is to cut across these boundaries and get across to different cultures and present the industry how it is.”
Showtime, which is from Karan Johar’s Dharmatic Entertainment, launched on Friday (March 8) and industry watchers will be closely following the Ormax ratings to see if Disney India, which is in the process of merging with Reliance Industries, has a hit on its hands. The Indian streamer has needed a boost after a tough 2023 in which it ceded subscribers after missing out on rights to the Indian Premier League cricket and lose its deal with Warner Bros Discovery for the likes of Game of Thrones and the famous famous Western media mogul drama, Succession.
Talking of Showtime‘s premise, something Hashmi recognizes. Minor spoilers follow: In the series, he plays Raghu, the son of Viktor Khanna (Naseeruddin Shah), a former Bollywood producer, who distrusts his child to take over the running of his famed Victory Studios. After one of Raghu’s movies is savaged by critics, his father decides to pass control to the journalist (Mahima Makwana) who wrote the article — revealing she is his secret granddaughter. When tragedy strikes soon after, Raghu faces a complete reset and is forced begin again with a totally new working dynamic.
“There is that bit of Succession, though that is about legacy news channels and the bloodline,” says Hashmi. “Will the kids live up to the legacy of the father? It’s a whole case of entitlement – and that comes into the conversation of entitlement in our industry. There are these nepo kids who rise up and are able to take the legacy forwards, but there are a lot of variables at play. Some nepo kids don’t bring that legacy forward and it’s very unfortunate.”
Hashmi notes the “father-son dynamic” dictates how his character arc plays out, with their clash of ideologies and differing generational ideas on what moviemaking looks like.
Film To Streaming TV
The actor is known for roles in high-grossing Bollywood action franchises such as Murder, Tiger and Jannat through the early stages of the 21st century. After a series of films performed poorly at the box office, his star was significantly revived last year when he appeared in Tiger 3, which is part of the Yash Raj Films Spy Universe. The film grossed nearly $60M and Hashmi’s performance was singled out.
At the same time, he was preparing to follow many other Bollywood stars into the world of streaming television after Sumit Roy approached him with the idea. “As an actor I want to grow and hone my skill set, so I’m open to any medium,” he says. “It’s interesting in OTT because of the wide variety of roles and the ideas and experimentation. Theatrical is very limited in what you can tell because, like the West, it tends to be larger-than-life films and tentpoles that work here. That limits how far you can go with characters. You can push the bar of course but OTT is freedom, because you’re not bound by box office weekend number.”
Hashmi says the collaboration has been “fantastic” with showrunner Mihir Desai, director Archie Kumar, screenwriters Mithun Gangopadhyay and Lara Chandni and dialog scribes Jehan Handa and Karan Shrikant Sharma.
“For me as an actor, I like to do the work during pre-production, so on the set I can have fun with the character as I’m clear,” he says of the process. You work with your vision and the director’s vision, and finally the character takes shape – you mould clay on the set as you go day after day.”
Hashmi hopes Disney+ Hotstar will return for a second season Showtime, with the series ending on a cliffhanger. In the meantime, he is set for his first non-Hindi-language film, the Telugu title OG opposite Pawan Kalyan and Priyanka Mohan. With RRR breaking through into the U.S. in 2022, the profile of South Indian film has never been higher, but locally Hashmi says much of it is to do with context.
“The big pan-Indian film has taken off where actors from different parts of the country come together,” he says. “They might predominantly come from the South Indian industry, but they are huge pan-India films dubbed in Hindi and other languages. OTT television also has a little to do with that rise, because of the exposure, different audiences and subtitling. OTT audiences are more versed with more languages and that has opened the doors. Whatever disruption Covid led to, these are things that came out of it.
“The South Indian industry is doing really well with big, must-see, tentpole films,” he adds. “2020 was not a good year for Bollywood but in the past few years we’ve seen really good numbers and recovery. There’s a lot more sure-footed film after Covid. It is more collaborative, with more artists from differ parts of the country and there’s an audience waiting to see that.”
Turning back to Showtime, he’s waiting to see how audiences feel about Bollywood once they’ve gone behind the scenes. Reviews have been mixed, but its audiences, not critics that will make up Disney’s mind about the future of the show.
“There is a lot of intrigue and enigma around Bollywood,” says Hashmi. “I don’t know if the film will reinforce or change those perceptions. I’m really interested to see how it pans out.”
