Wanted to work on the web, but not just to tick a box: Swwapnil Joshi
The web medium is a huge attraction for actors, both newcomers and seasoned ones. So, it’s no surprise when actor Swwapnil Joshi says he had been seeking an interesting role on the platform for two years.
Now that he has finally made his web debut with a Marathi thriller series, he tells us, “I’ve been fortunate enough to dabble in all sorts of entertainment — theatre, film, TV... but I didn’t want to do web just to tick a box.”
What was the drive then? “I wanted to explore the plus points of the platform, because the web takes content to a space as real as possible. And, web gives me the opportunity to be in that space and that character without any limitations of censorship or time frame. You tell the story as it is. I just wanted to do something that would explore the unexplored part of me as an actor,” adds Joshi, who felt a gritty thriller would be be good image-breaker for him.
Elaborating, he shares how Marathi cinema has portrayed him in a “very chocolate boy kind of an image”. “The boynext-door, happy boy, sweet boy, romantic boy, a son every mother wants, an ideal boy... I wanted to break that, and get into web. Toh mazaa aata. Otherwise, jo yahaan kar raha hun [Marathi cinema], wahaan [ in web] bhi wahi karta toh mazaa nahi aata. So, for the last two years, I’ve been refusing web content off and on — some good and some notso-good shows too,” shares Joshi, loved by Hindi TV audiences as a young Krishna in the 1990s.
Joshi, who has worked extensively across films and TV shows, is happy with how the characterisation of male actors in showbiz has changed. “The scope and entire inner
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catharsis of a male actor has undergone a drastic change because of the web. It makes the journey more exciting for us as actors because there’s a lot more to explore. It’s the best time to be alive for an artiste, as all the conventional myths about the hero have been torn apart,” he says.
“A hero is no more about six-packs. A hero can even shed a tear... and he’s not going to be looked at as a weaker guy. The humanness to a hero has made the male characters more sensitive and sensible in the writing stage itself,” Joshi adds.