‘CONTENT ON THE WEB IS QUITE BOLD’

Titas Chowdhury

Urvashi Rautela, who started her acting career with Singh Saab The Great (2013), believes that she’s yet to receive a chance to completely display her talent.

“Things take time. I started my acting career a few years back. It’s quite impossible to portray a wide range of characters in such a short span of time,” she says, adding, “What everyone has seen of me till now is just a small part of me. I feel like I haven’t utilised my talent to its full potential. I know more than 22 dance forms, from Bharatnatyam and Kathak to jazz.”

She says that she would want to follow the footsteps of stars like Hrithik Roshan and Shahid Kapoor.

“I see myself in a place where Hrithik Roshan and Shahid Kapoor are. Hrithik can do a Super 30 and a War (both 2019). Shahid is as comfortable in a Kabir Singh (2019) as he was in a Haider (2014). And both of them are such terrific dancers. I want to be an actor who is a good dancer too. But after Haseeno Ka Deewana in Kaabil (2017), I turned down more than 150 songs because I didn’t want to be typecast,” she elaborates.

For Urvashi Rautela, there’s nothing as important as humility.

The 25-year-old says, “I see myself as one of the very few fortunate people. I’ve won the title of Miss Universe India two times. The love and support that I’ve received from audiences is amazing. Having said that, I believe it’s very important to be humble and down to earth.”

Ask her about her plans ahead and the Pagalpanti (2019) actor excitedly says, “I won’t get stereotyped any time soon. I’m the solo female lead in the Hindi remake of a super hit Tamil film where you’ll see me in a de-glam role. And in the future, I wish to work with Sujoy Ghosh.”

Mohsin Khan started his career with the TV show, Nisha Aur Uske Cousins, but rose to fame by playing Kartik for the last five years, in a popular ongoing TV drama.

The success of the show and his character has established him as one of the popular actors on the small screen.

Now, news is that Mohsin might soon be seen in a web series. He has worked in 1400 episodes in his TV show, and was offered a web show a while ago, but “things are at the discussion stage”.

The 28-year-old actor feels the digital platform has a bright future.

“The digital boom in India has been amazing. There are numerous options for viewers including TV shows, original web shows and movies of their choice. This trend is here for good. The digital boom has also helped many TV, shows including mine which can be viewed any time by our audiences. Recently, I read somewhere that our show was the most viewed show on the OTT platform of our channel and it was such a proud moment for all of us,” he says, adding, the digital boom generates good opportunities for actors, directors, director of photography, writers and more entertainment for audiences.

“Everyone is getting great opportunities. It’s a great time for the industry. All those who have talent are being appreciated and applauded,” he adds.

While he is gung-ho about the digital platform, he also feels that web shows need to be censored to some extent.

“The content on the web is quite bold. There should be some kind of censorship. If we can reduce the abusive language a bit, it would be refreshing,” he opines.

Meanwhile, not many know that Mohsin is no stranger to the web.

“Over 10 years ago, I began dabbling in acting by making short films during my college days. One of them was about the underprivileged and their everyday struggle, and the other was on teenage crushes. Back then, there were limited options to showcase these shorts unlike today, where you have multiple platforms to upload your creation. We learnt how to edit our films from one of our friends’ parents who was a film editor,” he says, adding, “We learnt how to dub and worked behind the scenes. These experiences helped me understand the kind of work that goes into making a short film. While studying engineering, I explored this avenue along with modelling but acting was always on my mind.”