Kay Kay Menon: OTT provides platform to stars willing to act

Actor Kay Kay Menon, who has left a big mark on the OTT space with acclaimed projects, feels that self censorship is necessary.

Kay Kay Menon jumped on the OTT bandwagon way back when the medium itself wasn’t as big in India, as it is today. The Great Indian Dysfunctional Family, in 2018 marked his debut on the medium. And today, his body of work boasts of acclaimed shows such as Ray and Farzi.

Actor Kay Kay Menon

“OTT was not as popular then,” he starts off our conversation, “Every medium has it’s gestation period to be mature. Secondly, anything that is limited, I am okay with it. Unending stories like TV are difficult. If you have a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, then I don’t have a problem. I don’t look at OTT and films as separate.”

Ever since 2018, the number of film projects he takes on has gone down. He has done just three films since 2019. Has he consciously shifted his focus to OTT?

He quips, “No. Actors don’t have a say when their project will release. It’s incidental. When will you have three-four projects coming out in a year, or when it will release is beyond our control. Sometimes the films that we do, they don’t find a proper release, so producers wait for it. It is not planned from an actor’s side.”

SPECIAL OPS IMPACT

Menon gives a lot of credit to Neeraj Pandey’s show Special OPS for putting him back into the mainstream spotlight. “It is more to do with the fact that people rediscover you. Actors get an opening with OTT, which is quite meritorious. OTT doesn’t normally require stars but actors who can perform. In that sense, OTT is a sigh of relief for actors. When we made that show, we didn’t know it will be so big, just like we don’t when doing other projects,” says the 57-year-old.

Touching upon a much debated topic, we ask him to elaborate on the star system of films seeping into the web space. Does he agree? Menon replies, “A star could be a good actor also. You have to have stardom to attract audience. In OTT, a star has to be willing to tap into the actor within himself or herself. Even stars can’t rely on stardom, they have no choice but to belt it out in terms of professional acting. If that happens, then there is no issue. Stardom isn’t the main criteria on OTT. You will find that actors became stars, like Prateik Gandhi. It proves that this is a platform for stars who are willing to act.”

SELF CENSORSHIP IS IMPORTANT

Another pain point over the years for OTT has been the no censorship status it enjoys, and whether makers have gone overboard in exploiting it by way of nudity and abusive language. Menon however is pro self censorship. “It has to happen from within the person. You can’t have a headmaster all the time to tell you. In life, you should have your own sensibilities. There are repercussions to what you are doing on screen as a filmmaker. An actor’s job is to act it out. When you are writing and directing a series, people have to have their own sensibilities in terms of social responsibility. It isn’t like somebody needs someone to say ‘I will censor you’ There are such people in every field- some who take advantage, some who are responsible. There are different degrees of censorship. There is a certain tendency to sometimes take things for granted. It is entirely to the maker,” he asserts.