Exclusive! Pranay Pachauri: OTT platforms have been such a blessing for so many people

Pranay Pachauri is a talented budding actor who has recently been seen in multiple OTT projects including the Sidharth Malhotra starrer Shershaah and the Amazon Prime Video series Guilty MInds. 

In an exclusive chat with OTTplay, the actor talked about his journey in his latest show and his last movie too. Pranay also opened up on his thoughts on censorship on OTTplatforms and more. Excerpts:

How are you taking up the success of the show? How does it feel?

Top of the world, as an actor although you stay detached from the result but it’s always a good feeling when your hard work reflects on screen and gets acknowledged and validated by the Audience, however it’s important to enjoy this phase and prepare to work harder for the next.

You have distinctively put on some weight as we can notice in the series as well. Was this your character's requirement?

My character Shubhrat Khanna is a well educated, coming from an influential law background Delhi family and I wanted to play the character as authentically as I could both mentally and physically. So in order to look the part I decided to put on some weight as a character who would look like he’s from a “Khaata Peeta “ khandaan and also as a lawyer you hardly get time to workout so much on your physical appearance as you’re sitting and researching for most part of your cases and job. In order to look authentic and look the part this is what I decided to go ahead with.

OTT platforms have now evolved and have been offering so much content, do you think that it's helping the new talents as well as the established actors who were not getting their dues in the industry are now getting one?

I think it’s a wonderful time to be an actor, because yes so many people are now getting the chance to tell stories, showcase their talent, I think it was high time we evolved in our cinema and I think we are absolutely capable and competent to present some of the best movies in the world but earlier we couldn’t do so because commercial movies and making money was the object and that would take away from the art of storytelling and good cinema but now things are changing and you see that the OTT’s have been such a blessing to so many people, I firmly believe it is such a powerful medium to tell stories that leave an impact and we could see how everybody coped up during the pandemic with the help of great content on the OTT’s, young actors like me are getting opportunities to do and present our acting talent otherwise it was extremely difficult earlier.

What are your views on censorship on OTT platforms?

Well censorship to a degree works because as we are a cinema loving nation, films and series influence us and sometimes the Influence could be good and sometimes it could be bad, but censorship should be used to monitor the narration if its going against the morals and the secular fabric of our country and not to take away the essence of the stories, so it’s highly debatable and it’s a grey area to be honest

Tell us about your future projects.

I have another project coming out with amazon called Crash Course and this is about the life of students and professors in Kota, basically exploring the underbelly of the city and what goes on, I play someone who’s quite opposite to Shubhrat so it would be exciting to see how the audience responds to it. Another project called Karamyuddh which is a revenge based thriller will be out on hotstar and we are hoping the audience receives this fast paced drama well.