EXCLUSIVE | Rahul Bose on rise of OTT platforms: 'People are also watching trash, the idea of doing something on OTT is utter rubbish'

Rahul Bose, Aparshakti Khurrana Ishwaq Singh, and Anupriya Goenka’s ‘Berlin’ has been making the right kind of noise at the international film festivals. It’s all set to stream on Zee5 from September 13.

In an exclusive interview, Rahul , Aparshakti, and Anupriya spoke about the film, prepping for their respective characters, and Bose had a rather sharp take on the advent of OTT in the last six years.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

I have a common question to ask; how was it like going back to the era of the nineties?

Aparshakti: I think Atul Sabharwal has a beautiful knack of going back into era, from Class Of 83 to Jubilee to now Berlin. And that’s the beauty of his writing, and I love entering the retro world with him. It was very difficult for me because

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Rahul: I didn’t know the nineties. I was born after that. (says jokingly). For me, it was going back into a history that I didn’t know. So it was fascinating what my parents had gone through, what what people like them had gone through. Very fascinating for me. So it was I mean, you have to move the phone like this with your finger.

Though it’s very inspiring. It’s it’s always nice to go back in time like that, and I love that era. Absolutely. And, simple cheese on just to re Yeah. Revisit all of it. You can only take $200 with you outside. It’s lovely. Just sukoon and shaant and stuff.

Anupriya, after Tiger Zinda Hai and War, are you saving the nation again?

From Rahul, yes. It was a beautiful experience. I don’t think I can say I did a lot of prep for the character because it’s a very different character than anything that I have done before. All my scenes are so crucial because it’s through the point of view of Ishwaq. I think that’s very obvious in the trailer that he’s a special person. So my scenes are in flashback through Ishwaq’s point of view, and I don’t have any dialogues for that reason. So, they were all always written in terms of, you know, just paragraphs of what would there was there was an outline as to what was supposed to happen in the scene.

I did not really have much of a perspective of how we are going to do it. It was always a new discovery on set. But, I think I just enjoyed being a part of the process, being part of a beautiful story and with, you know, working with fabulous team.

Rahul, you are also a director. So as an audience, as a filmmaker, as an actor, how do you see the genre of thriller? I mean, is it all about that one final twist or do you feel we need to dig deeper?

Of course, you need to dig deeper. I think, there’s one genre of a spy thriller like James Bond, where there’s the good side and the bad side. Somebody wants to ruin the world, total world domination, and now you’re with Bond. And the idea is to see how he’s going to save the world yet again. This happens, try it’s a trope. Then there’s another kind of thriller where you are very clear that this is the bad guy, this is the good guy. And you’re wondering now, how is it going and it may not be to save the world or anything like that. But how is this person going to get caught? Who committed the murder?

And it’s been done before in the West. I do not think it’s been done here before, which is the psychological, slow burn, silence filled, shadowy exploration of people in the espionage world. A bit like John le Carré. Smiley’s People, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, where it’s the atmospherics, it’s the writing, it’s not the plot. It’s not about, oh god, will Boris Yeltsin die, it’s about what is going on and why, and who is doing what to what to what end. And that is where Berlin fits solidly into. So it’s not a whodunnit, it’s not only a spy thriller. It’s not only a psychological piece. It’s all three.

There is a spy element, but there is also this very ruminative, slow burn where the interiority of the characters is explored in so the audience doesn’t know who to back. Between all of this, which horse do I back? And there’s no James Bond here. Although, of course, in looks, it’s clear who James Bond is in this film.

Aparshakti: And between all of this, the film is very interestingly casted. These are not the faces you’ve seen together before. We all come from very different journeys. And that’s what I think I would like to believe we have performed decently well to the content.

Anupriya, we spoke about digging deeper. Criminal Justice does that. Asur does that. So when you get these scripts, these characters, do you ask any questions to your directors? I mean, how do you come on board? What is your reaction when you read these characters, these stories?

I’m told I ask a lot of questions. I used to think. I’ve been very blessed to be part of ASUR and Criminal Justice and now Berlin, which have been helped by very talented and serious filmmakers in the whole team. And, Asur for 1, Oni is a beautiful director in my eyes. I mean, it’s really just about collaborating and working together

Apar, you play a sign language expert, and Ishwaq is this character who cannot speak. How was it like doing scenes with him because he has to respond and the moment he responds, you have to also respond immediately?

So we majorly met during the workshops and then on the set. It majorly happened because of the pure give and take of 2 actors who I would like to say are good human beings as well. In real life and and on screen as well I think. Our characters in the film became friends before the two of us became friends in real. So I think that’s why we we could join the dots and and make it happen for us. Talking about the sign language, I think it’s a very difficult language. There are so many languages we come across in our daily lives, from Marathi to Gujarati to Bengali to Punjabi.

But sign language is not something we come across that often. That, I think, that became a little tedious. But having said that, by the time we raised the floor, and also we had 2 people who were guiding us for sign language, doing the proper choreography, especially keeping in mind, jump close-up shot. We had to be careful so that people from that community don’t come to us and tell us Yeh theek se nahin kiya hai. So I think we have done a fairly good job and we are extremely happy with what we have achieved.

Rahul, what do you have to say about the evolution of content that has happened over the last 6 years, ever since the advent of OTT? Do you feel we have become more fearless as content tellers, storytellers?

No. Nor have we have become any better or any worse. I think the ratio remains the same. There’s some good, there’s some bad, and there’s some very average stuff. And for that, you have to understand who you’re catering to. There was this misconception that with OTT, you would now cater to the highest common denominator. Right? Because all of us want to see the wonderful things. So we want to see that Croatian series about the about two women marooned on an iceberg in the Atlantic and fighting for survival. Or we want to see the film from Guatemala that’s come out, which is subtitled in English, which is about the subversive commando revolution set amongst the female guerrillas in the 1912s.

But it’s also equally true, it’s also equally true that Vinamra and Rahul, when nobody’s watching and they’re watching on their phone and they know nobody else is watching, they’re also watching trash that they would never admit to watching ever before. I can see in your eyes. So the numbers have exploded at the lowest common denominator, and the numbers have risen in at the highest common denominator. In essence, it’s the same. You’ve suddenly gotten a massive infusion of trash and a very healthy infusion of very interesting, well made content. So the ratio remains the same because human beings don’t change. You can change the device. Human beings don’t change. So in my opinion, I think the idea of doing something on OTT, which has now suddenly made you a better human being and a better creator is utter rubbish.

Is there more of it? Yes. Has it completely changed the industries, the number of people who can fantasize about a career in the movies or in entertainment, visual, audio visual entertainment? 100%. All of that is great. But qualitatively, I really don’t think you can turn on and say, today, we are making better quality stuff than we did 50 years ago. However, what has changed is the aching realization and it’s none too late for it, that if it’s not written well, we can’t make it work. Can I make it? Unless you are one of the 2 or 3 of the most charismatic superstars of history who can pull off anything. Unless you are those people, if it’s not written well, the audience is not going to accept it. That’s the one shift that’s happening.

Your film Pyaar Ke Side Effects is turning 18 on 15th September. I feel Siddharth is a character that is for the ages, and what I like about you as an actor is that no matter how fun the story is, there is always a certain sense of thairaav in your performances. I want to ask you how would you assess your performances or yourself as an actor?

You’re joking. Right? How can there be a right answer to this? If I say I’m fantastic, then, oh my god. If I say I’m crap, what false modestly? In everything that I do, I don’t look for a parallel in any other kind of cinema, for instance Shaurya, which is a very, very, very clear remake of A Few Good Men. I didn’t watch that. I’m not interested in what other people have done. I’m interested in what my character would do in the genre that that we are presenting. For instance Mr. And Mrs. Iyer, what’s the story? 2 strangers meet on a bus? You know they’re gonna fall in love. Now you could do it with 10 songs, and there’ll be riots, and there’ll be drama, and melodrama, and there could be 10 songs in between each.

Right? Or you could do it in the way Aparna did it. So it’s the pitch, where you’re pitching it. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m here to discover Siddharth, at the pitch that you have asked you, Saket, have asked me to do it for this film. So as far as I’m concerned, my approach to anything is, even in Berlin, is what’s the pitc. The pitch here is very, very subdued. The pitch of the film, not the character. So therefore, how are you going to play it? It has to match it’s an orchestra. You can’t be playing the trumpet loudly if everybody is playing very softly. So you have to make sure you get the pitch right and the volume right. As far as Siddharth is concerned, it seems like an easy role to play, and it wasn’t that difficult. But I always have one word to propel me onto the set.

With Berlin, it was survival. I have to survive. I have to win at any cost. With Siddharth, it was no commitment. To anything To my, DJing, there’s no commitment. I wanna be free. I desperately have to be free. I simply have to be free, you know. And within that, it was pitched as a comedy. So that’s why you break the 4th wall. And it was beautifully written. And when he decided to cast Malika, then Saket and I sat together and rewrote many of the jokes. The Delhi Bombay joke didn’t exist before. And then there were lots of jokes about me which I wrote myself. Bade bade words use karte ho, bade intellectual types ho.

So I think, it was written in a way that people immediately responded because it smelled true. People will call me from the cinema hall and say ‘I cannot believe you said this because I’m sitting with my girlfriend and she’s like, you are just like this.’ So, you know, whatever whatever. In every Indian household, that remote is still covered with plastic. The plastic has gotten fungus on it. You know, the century has changed. The television has been thrown away, but the remote with that battered plastic is still there. The plastic hasn’t been removed. That’s the victory of the Indian middle class. So I think that that detailing in the that stuff like that was just amazing. You know?

And lastly, one quality of your characters that you wish you had from Berlin?

Rahul: Oh, very interesting question.

Aparshakti: One thing I wish I had, was sign language.

Rahul: Because otherwise both the character and the person that is Apar, ethical, honorable, duty bound, you know, just essentially sensitive, compassionate human being seeking justice, very, very similar.