Known for speaking what is in his heart and not mincing words, actor Prakash Raj recently opened up on the post-pandemic phase of the acting industry in the light of his new web series Mukhbir. While talking about it, Raj said that the advent of OTT during the COVID period has stopped the movie mafia of the entertainment world from ruling over the content.
Prakash, who will be playing a savvy intelligence officer in the spy thriller Mukhbir, was asked about the comparisons of his upcoming show with the film, Raazi as both of their deals with Indian spies embedded in Pakistan. The 57-year-old disagreed with this and stated, “I don’t think so. When it comes to Mukhbir, it is not talking about two countries. The backdrop, the structure, the skeleton is that but is when that man questions his existence and identity. I don’t think it’s similar. It’s a new way of looking at things, with a differently-sensitised script. I don’t think there will be parallels.”
Further in his conversation, the Singham star said that Mukhbir doesn’t ‘bash the neighbour’ in its approach to patriotism. “In the recent past also, we have been seeing many series or stories that are very slice of life. People are tired of the cacophony. And with the pandemic, people are connecting to more content. And when you see the fakeness is dying and the mafia is not able to convert, while there is a fair play for talent and content, it feels good. The content is becoming the king. To come out of this cacophony, this sort of effort matters,” he quoted.
Prakash admitted that he ‘keeps using the word mafia now and then he has a good reason to term certain people in the industry that. “Cinema is a language, the most recent human language. It was like a river and it flowed but people stopped it. They put conditions on it that you should show it only in theatres and began thinking writing was only about two-and-a-half hour stories. Everybody had been stopping things like you can’t release it on TV first etc. But once the pandemic stopped this mafia, people had to go and this content came out,” asserted the actor.
“That’s the beauty of this medium. Earlier, I had to do certain loud films. I had to do it because there is a certain set of audience for that. My stardom is because of that. But now I don’t have to worry about it because the number of audiences is more now,” he added.
Mukhbir will start streaming on Zee5 on November 11. It also stars Zain Khan Durrani and Adil Hussain. Besides this, Prakash Raj has films like Varisu, Kabzaa, and Shaakuntalam in the pipeline.