Siddharth on non-Hindi speaking characters in films: ‘There’s a habit of making them caricatures’

Siddharth, who is awaiting the release of Disney+ Hotstar’s upcoming web series Escaype Live, has talked about the portrayal of non-Hindi speaking characters in films. In an interview, he said that if there are characters who are non-Hindi speaking, there’s a habit of making them caricatures. In the show, Siddharth plays a Kannadiga man who’s referred to as a Malayali by his colleague in the show’s trailer. Read more: Paparazzo slams Siddharth’s ‘filthy mental state’ after his tweet to Saina Nehwal, announces boycott; she reacts

Siddharth opened up about the portrayal of non-Hindi speaking characters in our films with an interview to Indian Express.“From the age of comedians, (we had) actors like Mehmood, who made unrealistic and strange portrayals which were very popular at that time. But today, you feel odd watching them. There was Mithun Chakraborty playing some Krishnan Iyer and selling coconut water. In those days liberties were taken in the name of entertainment. All these are cliches. That’s not how people speak. Today, if I do anything like that to a Kannada or a Kashmiri character, social media will have a field day,” he said.

Escaype Livemarks Siddharth’s return to Hindi-language content. In 2019, he starred in Netflix’s dystopian drama Leila, directed by Deepa Mehta, Shanker Raman and Pawan Kumar.

His new show, Escaype Live, is an Hindi-language science fiction thriller web series created and directed by Siddharth Kumar Tewary. It will premiere on 20 May on Disney+ Hotstar. Along with Siddharth, it stars Jaaved Jaaferi, Shweta Tripathi, Swastika Mukherjee, Plabita Borthakur and Waluscha De Sousa. The showrevolves around how social media has taken over lives.

Talking about Escaype Live, and why he took it up, Siddharth said: “Escaype Live tells how social media is the same monster that impacts everybody, be it poor or rich, where you have a choice to react and how you do that.” In the show, Siddharth plays Krishna Rangaswamy, a character he has described as completely opposite to him. He said he had to play the character with empathy.

Siddharth will next be seen in Shankar’s upcoming Tamil magnum opus Indian 2, co-starring Kamal Haasan.