Saurabh Shukla: I don’t romanticise my struggle

The senior actor says everyone goes through struggle but how do you remember it, matters. He talks about OTT’s identity and why it stands out.

I hope to make my own film this year,” says Saurabh Shukla, who has quite a few projects releasing this year, including films and web shows. After his last film release, Chhalaang, on OTT, Shukla says he is glad that OTT has brought different and interesting stories to the fore.

The National Award winning actor shot for Manohar Pandey, and was happy to be working with Kaushik Ganguly, as he wanted to collaborate with the Bengali director.

He explains, “OTT’s identity is their style of storytelling. They had to come up with a new language as cinema had mastered it in the last 100 years while TV is driven by bulk but on OTT, the finesse and story-telling of cinema exists along with subjects that cinema usually doesn’t talk about. That’s how new stories and new manner of storytelling has come about. This has also given a chance to other characters to shine on OTT besides the protagonists.”

The National Award winning actor shot for Manohar Pandey, and was happy to be working with Kaushik Ganguly, as he wanted to collaborate with the Bengali director. He is also looking forward to the role of the antagonist in Sidharth Sengupta’s web show, a thriller web series co-starring Tisca Chopra and in talks for another show.

Ask him about the tough times in his career and he shares, “Yes, I have had tough times in my career and I still do and it will be so in the future. Were my past struggles a sad thing? No, never. It depends how to look at life. People ask me often about my struggle and romanticise it. I reply, that everyone goes through it, that one didn’t have enough money to pay rent or for lunch. But, I think, how do you remember those times is what matters. I am fond of those memories because I made such good friends back then. All of them have achieved something in life. (Actor) Manoj Bajpayee and (director) Vijay Krishna Acharya were my roommates, (director) Tigmanshu Dhulia was a good friend and we all made a name for ourselves. Back then, there was struggle, insecurity but we would party every evening. Today, we don’t meet that often those parties were energetic and are somethings that I remember. Tough times are always a part of life and as you are human, so you do get scared and depressed at times, but you also have to keep going and moving on,” he concludes.