Karan Wahi is gearing up for the release of his upcoming show Never Kiss Your Bestfriend 2. The show that also stars Nakuul Mehta and Anya Singh will be released on ZEE5 on April 29. Prior to this, Karan has worked in several television shows including Dill Mill Gayye and Fuh se Fantasy, among others. Since Never Kiss Your Bestfrined 2 is again an OTT release, in an exclusive conversation with News18.com, Karan talked about his experience of working on both, TV and OTT.
On being asked if more actors are now switching to OTT content also because television scripts have stopped offering something productive, the actor explained that it is a preconceived notion that TV shows are regressive. He added that with the advent of OTT platforms, television is not dying, but expanding. “We already have this preconceived thought that television is regressive. But television, I feel, will never go anywhere, it’s gonna stay. Because a very large audience watches these stories and the benefit now everyone has got is that everyone is watching television shows also on the OTT platforms. Like what OTT has done for films, the films are being released on OTT, it is also helping out to a lot of television content to be streamed to an audience which was not TV audience,” he told News18.com.
Karan further mentioned that not necessarily everything on television is regressive, whereas everything on OTT might not be cool. “Challenging or non-challenging, I think it’s been a debate all these years, it has become challenging because you are shooting way more. You are shooting 5 to 6 episodes a week. If you shoot this much, creatively how much can you churn out from your system? In time, everyone wants to do web because everyone thinks the web is cool. But not necessarily everything on the web is great. I think the ratio to good content to average content differs a lot,” the actor added.
The actor agreed that an element of drama is often added to television shows but also added that there are shows on TV that are relatable and not regressive. “We say all this regarding TV because it’s considered that TV is regressive. There might be shows which are very regressive, but at the same time, there might be shows which are not regressive. There might be shows which are very relatable. Yes, there is a drama element to television, but that’s what the medium is. You can’t show a 10-episode love story on television without stretching it, it is as simple as that,” argued Karan.
Since he has also hosted several reality shows, we asked if he thinks such shows have become scripted these days. The actor explained that reality shows are not scripted, but dramatized, which makes viewers feel that they are scripted.
“I don’t know about today or any other show, I can vouch for my shows. I don’t think reality shows are scripted, I think reality shows just add a lot of drama to them now viz-a-viz what used to happen 12 years back. Probably, the content that works on reality shows hasn’t changed for years now and because of that, it looks scripted because they do similar things. But you cannot script a reality show. You cannot script results. You cannot script if I am going to dance well or if I am going to forget in the middle of my performance. You cannot script if I am going to lose tone while singing. I think the only thing you can do to make a reality show more interesting for you and for the viewers is to dramatize it. It is because of this drama, reality shows look fake or scripted,” he said.
The actor also cited Bigg Boss and argued that reality shows have become ‘fictionalised’. “Even in a show like Bigg Boss, you do not know who is saying what to whom and in general, we can say from the outside that they are unnecessarily creating an issue. But you don’t know what’s happening in that house, you are just watching the best one hour on TV. I guess reality shows have become more, probably a more fictionalised, kayee cheezey karwate hai (we ask them to do certain things) whether it is dance or games. I think it can be dramatized but it cannot be scripted,” concluded Karan.
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