Category: Celebrity

One of the most recognised faces of Indian comedy, and the mind behind talk show ‘Son of Abish’, Abish Mathew says that COVID-19 forced a lot of creators to go completely digital and it will be difficult for the comedy industry to come back to the live space…Abish speaks with Siddhi Jain.

“Just like a pendulum, we went from a completely live experience to completely digital, doing web series, sketches and shows. Once again, live stand-up was appreciated more than the YouTube stand-up. After the COVID-19 hit, everyone took to the digital space. Coming back to the live arena is going to be different. What that means is, this pandemic will blend the digital and live in a hybrid space,” Abish, who has hosted Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Comicstaan’, told IANSlife.

Speaking about the impact of the ongoing pandemic on the comedy industry, he shared over the phone: “Before COVID-19, we were justifying ourselves by saying industry standards don’t apply to us because we’re artists. As soon as COVID-19 hit, we would see that immediately, everyone evolved. Nobody cribbed, nobody complained. A lot of people were forced to evolve into digital creation, and they have adapted to it really well. That’s when I realised we’re an industry.”

Luckily, Abish’s talk show had been going on for the last six years, and was easy to plug into the digital port because hundreds of viewers were anyway watching the edited version online. “The setback in the live industry was a lot, but thanks to Zoom or video conference platforms, it is recovering very slowly as well. It’s like being back in 2009.”

The show’s seventh season, which was completely home-made, features Shruti Haasan, Kalki Koechlin, Asif Ali, Flying Beast aka Gaurav Taneja, Tanmay Bhat, Kanan Gill and Rahul Subramanian as guests in some of its episodes. Boman Irani and Anubhav Singh Bassi are upcoming guests on the show. While the content proves to be an engaging crowd-puller just like before, the setting of the show has transformed from a set to a video conferencing call.

On making of the seventh season, he says: “Pandemic had set in uncertainty about ‘what we are going to do’, and it has started growing. We were discussing possibilities and, I said, wait, why don’t we do ‘Son of Abish’ ? And my friends and others were like, ‘That’s not a good idea’. I agreed. But, then they said, hold on, ‘It’s your show, you can do what you want. What’s the worst that could happen? I would not get views.’ I’d show people this was done at home, if it doesn’t work. This time around it was a bunch of people, who had this attitude which can be summarised in five words: F*** it, let’s do it.”

“Everyone was doing this entire season for the first time, so there were no expectations, thus no stress. The only deadline was Friday 8 P.M. We, as artists, what we do is we keep editing, editing, adding, adding, colour correcting. You put that effort in movies. Here, the effort was to put out the best version you can. Otherwise, you keep working, and people don’t like it, and your emotion is connected to it. ‘Son of Abish’ is my therapy.”

The hit talk-show, has previously featured stars like Irrfan Khan, Vidya Balan, Taapsee Pannu, Sonakshi Sinha, Badshah, Vicky Kaushal, Abhay Deol, Radhika Apte, Vishal Dadlani, Vir Das, Jim Sarbh, Siddhant Chaturvedi, and Kunal Kamra.

“‘Son Of Abish’ Picks is where we bring new talent and it is an explosive hit. The comments are overwhelmingly about them and a lot of artists are being recognised because of this. Bringing in international artists has expanded the reach of the show. Bringing a huge Pakistani Creator (Irfan Junejo) has sparked a lot of cross border artist collaboration,” he adds.

Abish Mathew has become one of the most sought after comedians and producers in the comedy world. “In the future, these changes will happen — Tier-based seating: You will have broadcast, people watching it on a website online or a software. You have the live experience, which means the closer you are to stage, the more expensive it gets. In the digital show, the differentiation would be like this: people who can only watch the show, people who can be on the same Zoom or Google Hangouts call but not have the right to speak, people who get chat access, people who get a private conversation at the end of the show, and then people who can do screenshots (new-age selfies) ‘backstage’ will be another tier.”

“As an artist, you’d be doing shows with people from San Francisco and from Mumbai, which is why you can’t just do jokes for the people of Bombay. You’d have to make it slightly more global and understand your audience,” Abish said.

After the pandemic, everyone is coming to the realisation that we have an audience which is very wide, he says.

“Our accountability has increased. During the pandemic, I have learnt the names of more of my fans than I have in my entire career. I knew 5-6 people, now I know 20 people who keep coming back to the show. There’s a community finally being built around ‘Son of Abish’, which is a very positive thing. Everyone wants to belong, also the audience and the artist.”

Abish also spoke about content-wise evolution for creators.

“There are two things that can happen: implosion and explosion. In implosion, when you get validation from people who follow your stuff, you only start to create for those people. If you take one million followers, and you create jokes for them, they’d become exclusive super fans. You’d become buddies with them. You make specific art that connects with them. Then there’s an explosion, where I want new people to discover my stuff. It was a numbers game. We’d have to figure whether we have to make implosive or explosive art.

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‘Four More Shots Please’ actress Sayani Gupta feels that portrayal of women in the Hindi mainstream cinema is moving in the right direction, thanks to more women storytellers coming to the forefront and bringing with them a “female gaze” that counters a “male gaze” prevalent for the longest time…Sayani speaks with Siddhi Jain.

Sayani, 34, is known for the strong roles she plays. She made her feature film debut in 2012 in ‘Second Marriage Dot Com’ and has appeared in supporting roles in films such as ‘Fan’, ‘Jolly LLB 2’ and ‘Article 15’. Her latest web series, which was a popular success, has recently been nominated at the International Emmy Awards.

Asked about the critique of how women are portrayed in the mainstream cinema, and if she finds it changing at all, Sayani tells IANSlife: “It is, and it should be critiqued, especially in Bollywood and in Hindi mainstream cinema. It’s extremely problematic, you don’t have representation of all kinds of woman. It’s only a very skewed version of what a woman should be, and what she’s doing.”

She adds: “Often she doesn’t have a valid agency of her own life, and often decisions are being made for her. Her only motto in life is to make the hero happy or romance the hero or wait for the hero to save her from the villain, and so on and so forth. Of course it’s changing, it’s moving in the right direction and that’s only because there are many more women story tellers who are coming in the forefront — the women directors, technicians, cinematographers. When you have women telling their own stories, then it makes a huge difference in terms of what woman gaze is. For the longest time, the gaze has been extremely male and that needs to change. Of course it’s changing for better, but we have a long, long way to go. Until we change our society, how we think, how we look at the girls, how we bring up our children – the girl child and the boy child, it’s not going to change much.”

Sayani is hosting a virtual acting workshop on ‘Getting into Character’ in the series ‘Femmes in Film’ by Bumble and India Film Project, on Saturday, October 3. Developed exclusively for the Bumble Community, ‘Femmes in Film’ is a series of virtual workshops to be hosted by women artistes including Sayani, Aranya Johar, Kanika Dhillon and Anjali Menon. These weekly workshops will focus on acting, screenwriting, storytelling, and filmmaking.

Calling ‘Femmes in Film’ a great initiative, Sayani gives a sneak peak into her workshop. “It’s a workshop that I’m taking on acting and approaching characters, building characters. It is something that we do as actors very regularly, everyday. It is something that I’m more than happy to be sharing with the Bumble community and whoever is attending the workshop. It’s something I’m really passionate about and I hope that I’m able to impart something or at least share something of interest and value to whoever is attending the workshop, I would hope so. As a concept of what IFP and Bumble are doing, is really brilliant. You need more and more woman creators, filmmakers, storytellers, actors, writers, comedians to come at the forefront and share their story, share their process. It is also very interesting because we need to amplify the voices that need to be heard more, especially today.”

Stories by women, or stories featuring strong women leads, are often put in the box. Does she agree? Sayani answers in an affirmative.

“Of course, they are put in a box. We have to try to break those moulds and break those stereotypes. I don’t think a movie written or directed by a women has to be essentially ‘female centric’. That’s a problem in itself, when you make movie with a male protagonist, it’s not called ‘male centric’ but when there is a female protagonist it’s called ‘female centric’. Why? These are universal stories, these are stories about people. Why this gender demarcation and putting different genders in different boxes? That’s not necessary, and that’s extremely problematic. That I feel is something one needs to do away with but that’s not going to happen overnight.”

Asked what is the one thing she thinks is not taught enough in cinema education, but should be, Sayani, who is graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) – one of India’s top film schools, points to the ability to monetize one’s creative passions.

“One thing that FTII doesn’t teach you is to go out there and look at commerce and project yourself as a commercial creator. How to make money, basically, and how to sell. Because there are lot of brilliant people who come out of FTII and they’re often struggling with how to really marry the two — creativity and commerce. That is something that I wish somebody taught us but nobody did. (Laughs) We are obviously left to ourselves to fend for ourselves, as it happens in most art schools. So, how to monetise because filmmaking is an extremely expensive medium – it’s business, after all – one needs to understand all of that, so that needs a little more focus.

Coming back to the basics, she also feels the need to teach better writing. “I think the first is to write better, to write better characters, to write better women characters, to write with all kinds of representation – be it women, be it the marginalized of the population, be it the trans community, be it the LGBTQ+ community. There needs to be more unapologetic representation in our cinema, so I think writing is something that needs to be given more importance.”

According to Samarpita Samaddar, Bumble India PR Director, Sayani is an incredible artiste whose session will be focused on acting and how to approach characters in cinema. “The weekly series, Femmes in Film, will focus on acting, screenwriting, storytelling, and filmmaking. We look forward to kicking off the series with Sayani Gupta on October 3,” she shared.

Other discussions in the series are: ‘Pitch perfect poetry’ by Aranya Johar (October 10), ‘The art of character development’ by Kanika Dhillon (October 17), and ‘Things they don’t teach you at film school” by Anjali Menon (October 24). The workshops are free to attend. To attend the workshop, one can download Bumble, match with the India Film Project profile on the Date, Bizz or BFF modes and apply to book a spot.

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