Anshuman Pushkar’s recent web series, Grahan which is set in the backdrop of the 1984 Sikh riots courted controversy ahead of its release and the actor reveals that even he along with makers got threats and attacking messages.
But post the release, there has been a change, and he tells us, “I’ve always maintained that audience should first watch and then decide. I used to get many threat messages as well along with the creators, but now those very people are like, ‘Sorry bhai , humne galat samjha tha’. They are apologising. So many people just raise objections as a publicity stunt and nothing else.”
Not just this series, many OTT projects such as Tandav and The Family Man 2 have got embroiled in controversies of late. Pushkar feels it’s not fair to thwart creative freedom and people have the right to show real life inspired stories.
“We’re trying to tell stories which come from our society, and are tales of lives. We’ve to keep it real and we also want to do it without hurting anybody’s sentiments — religious or otherwise. We just want our projects to be loved, but then again, pleasing everyone is not possible while making real-life based stories because if it’s liked by all then you haven’t made it well,” he explains.
The actor, who has also starred in web show, Jamtara, says in the case of Grahan, the makers waited for four months to revisit the whole series to make sure that there wasn’t anything remotely hurtful.
“There were brutal incidents that took place back then, but we didn’t get into all that. We only showed whatever was required to represent what had happened,” he says.
Pushkar asserts that in some way, the makers and web platforms are also responsible for making the people wary about web projects.
“Some people were misusing the creative freedom on OTT. They turned it into a soft porn space initially, be it with unnecessary sexual content or extremely abusive language. You can’t use such tools for titillation and expect that there won’t be consequences. I’m not in favour of censorship but regulation is necessary,” he concludes.