Remember Karan from Made in Heaven? Newly nominated for an Emmy, the actor Arjun Mathur spoke to Brut on playing a gay man on screen and on why Bollywood isn’t full of only villains.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00I thought it's a misprint or a joke or a mistake someone's made.
00:04I just didn't believe it for like the first 10 minutes, honestly.
00:19I got a phone call from Shaivani Gupta, a fellow actor,
00:23who, she just asked me, have you heard the news?
00:28And I panicked because these days when someone says that to you, it's quite worrying.
00:34So yeah, and then I was like, what is this news?
00:39What is this bad news you're about to give me? I don't want it.
00:46I thought it's a misprint or a joke or a mistake someone's made.
00:50I just didn't believe it for like the first 10 minutes, honestly.
00:58I've played homosexual characters before, twice in my career.
01:02So actually, when this came to me, initially my first instinctive reaction was like,
01:09really again, am I just getting typecast?
01:13And in fact, you know, the first time I went in for an audition,
01:16they didn't even mention to me that it is that the character is gay.
01:20I'm a heterosexual straight man.
01:22And every time I had to get intimate with a man on screen,
01:26it took a certain level of psyching myself up, you know,
01:31and there was a bit of nervousness each time I had to do it.
01:44People are talking about nepotism.
01:46It's everywhere.
01:47And it's not really something that you can blame on one person either.
01:51You know, you can't blame the producers who have to make their money back.
01:54You can't blame the children of, you know,
01:58film of actors and stuff who can't help where they were born.
02:03You know, if you have to, then you should also blame the audience
02:05who only wants to consume this, you know,
02:09and the media for that matter,
02:10who doesn't really care to push unknown people on the front pages.
02:14Obviously, they only want to push Taimur and, you know,
02:18children of people who are known.
02:20So firstly, like, the thing is, the industry is just a really soft target
02:25because we leave ourselves so vulnerable for the love of people
02:30and for the brickbats.
02:45I just want to say it's not at all a bad place.
02:48We're not any kind of, you know,
02:53conniving murderers or drug cartels, syndicates,
02:58all this stuff that I'm hearing.
03:00And I think honestly, like, really,
03:03there's like really bigger problems that we have.
03:06You know, these things that are being talked about right now,
03:09they affect like a small fraction of people.
03:12Like if a big star is being questioned by an agency,
03:16it's affecting like only that star and their management
03:20and maybe a few people.
03:21But there are issues going on in our country right now
03:24that are affecting millions of people.
03:26You know, I think I really think and feel that
03:29those are what deserve media attention,
03:31front page news, limelight, and not all this,
03:34you know, whatever's going on in Bollywood.
03:36It's all minuscule stuff.