Manoj Bajpayee garnered tremendous love from audiences of all age groups ever since he played the character of Srikant Tiwari, an undercover agent trying to strike a balance between his job and family, in the hit Amazon Prime Video web series, ‘The Family Man’. The show has proved that OTT is not just about censor-less content. The content has to be strong enough that it touches the hearts of people, and then only will audiences accept it.
In an interview with Outlook, soon after the release of ‘The Family Man’, Bajpayee speaks about the burning issue of censorship on OTT, and OTT’s far-and-wide reach even to the remotest places of the country.
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“Sex, violence, and abuses, if they are there just to grab eyeballs, they will always fall flat. It will never last. When you are making ten episodes of a web series, how can you make each episode impactful with just sex, violence and cuss words? Your content has to be solid and the characters, their conflicts in relationships or their worlds have to be universal,” says Bajpayee.
“Even if you are making a local story, the emotions should be universal. Shrikant Tiwari’s fights, struggles, and conflicts in relationships are all universal, just the way it happens in the life of an average middle-class guy anywhere in the world. I have been receiving accolades from across the world simply because people are relating to this character,” adds Bajpayee.
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It’s true that people have connected to the show deeply and loved even the second season as much as they did the first season. People from even the most rural parts of the country have watched the show’s two seasons and are eagerly awaiting on any update about the release of the next season. This far-and-wide reach of a show like ‘The Family Man’ can be credited to the perpetration of various OTT platforms, even in the remotest parts of the country.
“To be honest, none of us had ever thought that something like this would happen. We had no idea about the reach of OTT platforms or the extent to which they had penetrated. Let alone us, even the people associated with the platform had no clue,” says Bajpayee.
“The overall response has been mindboggling. It is always overwhelming whenever you are appreciated by a small or a large audience for your performances, but how ‘The Family Man’ has evoked reactions from people, cutting across age groups around the globe, is quite amazing. I have never seen anything like it,” concludes Bajpayee.
