Abhay Deol: ‘People have tried to smear me, there is a cost to speaking your mind’

An unconventional and individualistic actor, Abhay Deol, has again taken the path less taken in the Hindi film industry as he appears in JL 50, a sci-fi show with a time travel angle. As the show opens on SonyLiv, the actor spoke about his choice of films and how he believes the coming of streaming platforms has democratised the system. The actor says he chose the show as it was 'high concept' and didn't pander to 'the mainstream or a formula'. It is the formula that he wants to eschew. 'It is not that Bollywood is not creative but it is only one kind of creativity,” he says from Los Angeles where he is living now. JL50 is about a plane crash that's discovered more than three decades after the plane took off. The show also stars Pankaj Kapur and Piyush Mishra. He welcomes how people are speaking up now in the industry, hoping it will bring about a change. He says he spoke against the system years ago and he had to pay the price for it. “People tried to smear me,” he says, adding that he paid for it professionally.