‘OTT CREATED SPACE FOR ACTORS NOT CONNECTED TO HINDI FILMS’
Monica Dogra feels the web has brought with it a pletheora of opportunities
As an after-effect of the pandemic, streaming space is growing stratospherically, creating new opportunities for storytellers as well as performers. And actor Monica Dogra feels the new OTT wave has brought with it a sense of equality.
“With digital platforms, so many stories are now being written that have really created diversity in casting. The writing has gotten better. Of course, there’s a lot more content now, which means there’s a lot more room for actors who never really had space,” Dogra opines.
The actor, who herself took a dive into the OTT world this year with the series The Married Woman, continues, “That has created this whole new wave of super fine actors, not necessarily connected to the royal family of Bollywood. And I think that’s really amazing.”
Just like the evolving OTT story, Dogra, 34, says she herself is constantly changing and finding newer ways to reinvent and adapt.
“I’m still finding Monica. If you look at my career and my art, you can’t define me. You can describe me with one word, which is experimentation. I’m reinventing and constantly becoming something new,” muses the actor, known for films such as Rock On!! (2008), Dhobi Ghat (2011) and Fireflies (2013).
Some days she’s a DJ, some days, a musician, some days she’s living her Bollywood dream, some days she’s judging, and some days, she is all about the reality drama. That’s why the actor is able to segue into various avatars, because she has always given herself “permission to reinvent myself”.
Dogra elaborates, “I have always done things from my heart and sometimes, I have second guessed that decision, that, ‘What if I just did something that made me more famous, and if I’d be able to pay this or that after doing that’.”
However, she feels blessed and lucky to emerge through the journey with a lot of experiences. “I have an accent. I’m an NRI. I have dark skin. I’m not a white girl. There are so many things that make me not fit in. I am in my 30s and I’m still doing my thing,” says Dogra, who is glad that people are “moving away from the white skin obsession” and that she has used all her traits to carve a place for herself in the world of entertainment.
With digital platforms, so many stories are being written that have created diversity in casting. There’s a lot more content now, which means there’s a lot more room for actors who never really had space.
MONICA DOGRA,
Actor