New Delhi, Dec 11 (PTI) Her quirky portrayal of the naive, dim-witted Hansa Parekh in “Khichdi” made her a 2000s TV icon, although actor Supriya Pathak now has little interest in television, saying the medium declined once it shifted toward daily-soap formats.
Describing her long stint on television — from “Idhar Udhar” (1985) and “Ek Mahal Ho Sapno Ka” (1999) to “Baa Bahoo Aur Baby” (2005) and “Chhanchhan” (2013) — as its “golden period” and something that she is proud of, Pathak lamented that the medium today, driven by daily soaps, prioritises quantity over quality.
“Once television shifted to daily soaps, its quality really suffered. It became more about how much you could finish in a day rather than what kind of work you were doing. If you managed 15 minutes of footage, they’d say, ‘Great, it’s been a good day,’ though no one cared about how good those 15 minutes actually were. That’s when, for me, television started going downhill.
“Even today, I still get role offers, yet I don’t feel like taking them on. I’m not interested in watching television either, even if I had the time,” Pathak, who was in the capital last month to perform at the sixth edition of Delhi Theatre Festival, told PTI.
Pathak’s disappointment is not limited to the working of the TV medium alone.
She is equally dissatisfied with OTT productions in India for their “similar kind of storytelling”, while finding content from around the world on these platforms to be “far better, more diverse, and higher in quality”.
The 64-year-old actor’s major grievance with OTT today is that once one subject works, there are makers ready to bankroll several more projects on the same lines.
“I don’t think we need that. I mean, if we have a possibility of making 10, then because one has worked, why make the other nine the same? Why don’t we work? Let’s make other nine different,” she said, adding that she is not a fan of the explicit use of bad language in streaming platforms and prefers Indian stories to be portrayed in their entirety, rather than in isolated pockets.
Be it OTT or television, Pathak wonders whether it is the drive for profit or bureaucratic interference that prevents the industry, despite being full of talented people, from delivering quality productions.
This very uncertainty has held Pathak back from wearing the producer’s hat, even though she is brimming with story ideas.
“I want to produce stories which I want to tell. But again, I don’t know whether, you know, the kind of stories I want to tell will be the kind of stories that the channels or the OTT platforms would want to tell,” she concluded.
For the unversed, Pathak and her husband actor Pankaj Kapur launched their own TV production house, Grass Company, in 1994.
“Mohandas B.A.L.L.B” was the first serial they produced and acted in, under the banner. PTI MG MG RB RB
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.