Mrunal Jain to make his OTT debut soon, says he started getting OTT offers as people thought he left television

Mrunal Jain shares that he was focusing on other work projects while he had been away from television for four years, but he was suddenly flooded with OTT offers because people thought he had “left the TV space altogether”.

The actor reveals that he went abroad for a year after finishing his TV show Nagarjuna in 2016 to work on an Indonesian show, and when he returned in 2018, he had two films (Sooryavanshi and Sab Kushal Mangal), among other ventures to focus on. Though he was delighted to get OTT offers, he felt sad to see how “TV actors were still looked down upon when it came to casting for movies as well as OTT”. “At times, the perception is that there is a very limited range [of roles] that a TV actor can do, which is disappointing,” he says, adding, “Tell me one name from the small screen who is also working on major web [projects]. They do not even get the offers unless they have been away from TV for five or six years. So, I don’t think the lines between entertainment mediums are blurring… I have seen it, I have experienced it.”

However, the actor is all praise for OTT. “It differs from television in many ways, not just content. An actor is given a lot of time to prepare for his character. You have a bound script of 10–15 episodes, and you know how the story begins and ends. You are aware of the story’s layers and progression over time. So, when an actor prepares for a role, he knows what he’s doing in terms of giving his character dimensions and variations. It also aids an artiste in charting his relationship with other characters, as opposed to TV, where what happens next is decided every Thursday based on the TRPs,” says Jain, who will soon be seen making his OTT debut with Rohtak Sisters.

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