Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, R Madhavan: Bollywood actors who made their digital debut in 2018

Sacred Games, Breathe, Ghoul, Mirzapur and Lust Stories — these were some of the most talked-about ventures this year. Promoted aggressively on different platforms from TV, radio to local trains, there was no way you would have missed them, unless you were truly living under a rock!  What made them stand out was the fact that big Bollywood names like Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, R Madhavan and Pankaj Tripathi were attached to the projects. But no, they were not for the big screen, nor were they aired on TV — these were web series streamed online! In fact, B-Town actors who may have shunned TV so far, aren’t thinking twice about embracing the digital format.

Saif can take a bow for bringing about this paradigm shift. He became the first mainstream Bollywood actor to hop onto the digital platform with Sacred  Games, where he played a realistic Mumbai cop in pursuit of a mafia boss. The crime drama not only had the Indian viewers and critics rooting for it, but also the Hollywood media taking note. As Saif said, doing the show was not a step down but a step in the new direction. The 48-year-old actor has already started shooting for the second season.

It was also Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s digital debut and as underworld don Ganesh Gaitonde, he walked away with a huge applause. His dialogues went viral and his character gave birth to several memes and videos — Gaitonde as a teacher and Gaitonde on a dating app! Needless to say, people are looking forward to seeing more of his droll humour in Season 2.

For R Madhavan, Breathe turned out to be his first as a baddie in the Hindi space. As the father of a child suffering from terminal disease in need of an organ transplant, Madhavan played a dark character. He had told this paper that shooting for it was more difficult than films!

The series also marked the debut of another B-Town actor Amit Sadh, who played an alcoholic cop battling his inner demons even as he chases a killer. Besides his complex character, the fact that it would be streamed in 200 countries and people would watch an Indian series had blown him away! Not surprisingly, he will soon start filming the next season.

Pankaj Tripathi, who has been winning rave reviews for his several film outings like Stree this year, Newton and Bareilly Ki Barfi last year, made his online debut with Sacred Games and followed it up with Mirzapur. As the dreaded gangster Kaaleen Bhaiyya, he gave another top notch performance, showing that for him, the size of the screen doesn’t matter, content does.

Ditto Radhika Apte, who has been riding the success wave this year with Pad Man, AndhaDhun and Baazaar. She had a great run online too with Sacred Games, horror-thriller Ghoul and Lust Stories. The actress probably has the maximum web series this year which spawned the funny meme, “Jahaan jahaan Netflix vahaan vahaan Radhika!” 

Then there’s Kalki Koechlin, whose love for experimenting with roles led her to Smoke. She played a DJ who gets caught in the drug mafia in Goa, something that the actress can pull out of her sleeve easily.  

Others like Ali Fazal and Swara Bhasker, who were among the first ones to make their presence in the web space, returned this year — Ali in Mirzapur and Swara in the sequel of It’s Not That Simple. The likes of Vikrant Massey and Jim Sarbh, who’ve carved a niche for themselves in films also ventured into the digital space this year. 

Not just actors, even filmmakers from Anurag Kashyap to Zoya Akhtar have helmed some edgy and out-of-box content for the web. As trade analyst, Taran Adarsh says, “Actors and storytellers who want to push the boundaries with stories that perhaps cannot be told on the big screen take to digital format. The charm and craze for big screen will never go, but digital is slowly catching up as a parallel industry. With films also being directly premiered on the web space, it is emerging as an alternate model. In the West, it is common for big stars to do web series and now with Saif and Abhishek, it’s happening here too.”

FILMS FIRST ONLINE

Besides web series, a few films that were made for theatrical release got directly premiered on the digital platform. These included Love Per Square Foot, Lust Stories, Tigers and Rajma Chawal. So, by default, actors like Rishi Kapoor, Bhumi Pednekar, Emraan Hashmi and Manisha Koirala were seen for the first time on the digital platforms.

NEXT IN LINE

The coming year will see Abhishek Bachchan making his digital debut with Breathe 2, Arjun Rampal foraying with The Final Call and Arshad Warsi with Asura.