People started forgetting me at one point, says Sharib
SFilmistaan ke baad kuch khaas nahin ho raha tha career mein. Thanks to OTT content, things changed for the better. SHARIB HASHMI, Actor
harib Hashmi’s career was on the downhill, until web turned the tables. The actor went on to star in projects such as Asur, Scam 1992 and The Family Man (TFM), and since then, there has been no looking back. The 46-year-old, recently seen in the web show The Great Indian Murder, feels there’s a big difference in how people treat him now versus how they’d treat him earlier.
“Farak toh aaya hai. Makers now offer me better characters. There’s a sea of change after TFM, I am grateful to God for that cracker of an opportunity. I can’t thank Raj and DK (filmmaker duo) enough, they brought me under the limelight. Filmistaan (2012) ke baad kuchh khaas nahin ho paa raha tha mere career mein, log bhoolne lage the. Thanks to OTT content, things changed for the better,” he shares.
The more successful you become, the lesser risks you take — this applies to the film industry, where people like to stick to the one thing that fetched them success. Having found his footing in showbiz with a host of successful web projects, will he stop taking risks and take it easy from this point onwards?
“Jaise mere priya dost Pratik Gandhi (actor) ne kaha tha Scam mein, ‘Risk hai toh ishq hai’,” Hashmi quips, adding, “There is risk in every thing and every project. How would you know what will work and what won’t [if you don’t take a risk]? At least you get to say that you attempted something different. Risk is good, you grow that way. If it doesn’t work, you learn. It’s a win-win situation.”
Chatter has begun about how even though OTT has churned out great content, it is all reaching a saturation point. But Hashmi disagrees, and reasons that there were a lot of shows that came when the web tide swept over India a few years go, but not all could make a mark. “Only Sacred Games and Mirzapur are remembered from that period, because they worked. Scam 1992 was a show that didn’t get promoted too much, nor was it released on a channel which was big back then. But despite that, people saw it and it became a blockbuster. If you do good work, you will be seen,” he concludes.