‘I DIDN’T GROW UP BEING OBSESSED WITH FILMS’
Sobhita Dhulipala, who gained recognition for her web show, says it’s the story and not the medium which is important
The web platform has brought about a paradigm shift in the Indian entertainment industry. And one product of this boom is Sobhita Dhulipala. Despite starring in three Bollywood films, the actor gained recognition only after her debut web series, Made in Heaven.
Does this mean actors now no longer obsess about the 70mm screen? “In any medium, if the work becomes substandard, it might become obsolete,” she says.
Confessing that she doesn’t have a vast experience of watching films, the 27-yearold shares, “I didn’t grow up being obsessed with films. I grew up obsessed with books. So, any medium of watching in itself is a very new experience for me,” adding, “Hence for me, content is content. The outcome of this boom is that eventually there will be a healthy competition to make really good content and whoever is doing it better is going to win.”
And her love for OTT platforms only seems to have grown because she has already shot for another web series, an espionage thriller, besides a web horror film anthology in the making. Sobhita says she is amused by her own choices as anybody else is. “People aren’t able to gauge why
I do what I do and what I take up. It’s because of the kind of films I have done in the past are not the typical commercial films (Raman Raghav
2.0, 2016, Chef, 2017 and Kaalakaandi, 2018,” she says, adding that she didn’t understand the digital medium initially. “But I’m glad that it did well. When a good project does well, it’ll give 10 more such projects the window to happen.”
While bold and edgy content on the web has been given a thumbs up, Sobhita feels there are still pockets in the country where it’s not welcome. “I was pleasantly surprised that people were so open to [Made In Heaven]. It’s still a very judgmental society. So, it’s a very big deal for me that so many people watched it,” she adds.