Abhishek Banerjee: The power of OTT is that it is a democratic watching process

Actor Abhishek Banerjee says very few people say they found a web show to be bad, because only the good ones are watched and talked about — viewers have the option to leave any show midway and switch to another.

The web show Pataal Lok and his character, Hathoda Tyagi became immensely popular, and emerged as a success during the lockdown, with OTT platforms being the only source of entertainment for people. Actor Abhishek Banerjee, who portrayed this deadly role, is not only happy, but says that he never realised the meaning of “going viral” before this happened.

Actor Abhishek Banerjee shot to fame as the character of Hathoda Tyagi in the web show Pataal Lok.

“It’s because of my character that I realised what going viral means, earlier I had just heard about it. We’re suddenly seeing fandom for OTT now. The power of this platform is that it’s reachable to anybody, it’s a democratic watching process. Anyone can watch whatever they want. And it’s not that if you’ve started something, you’ve to finish it, they can choose not to, and that’s a huge power for the public,” says the 32-year-old.

Banerjee adds that this very thing also works in the favour of newcomers.

The Stree (2018) actor has been observing this since the year 2015, when he noticed the kind of power and reach web content enjoyed.

“I had gone to Benaras for a college event, and was among the first few people to be associated with web shows. I remember meeting some people, and I had some Bollywood actors with me. Some kids wanted to click a picture with me. Those actors were like ‘Abey tere bhi fans hain!’ I said ‘Ya, it’s a different set of things you are not aware of’. I had skipped the generation of Netflix and Amazon, hum log thoda late thhe,” says the actor.

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