Actor and former VJ Purab Kohli connects over a WhatsApp call from London, where he is based, to talk about his latest outing, Out of Love. Rather than an interview, it turns out to be more like a discussion where he frequently digresses from the topic and takes off on a different tangent before deciding to make a course correction. The free-wheeling chat with Saimi Sattar reveals that the actor, who has been a part of some pathbreaking films like My Brother Nikhil, Rock On and shows like Hip Hip Hurray and Typewriter, has interests which extend beyond the glitz and glamour of the industry

What made you take on the show?

The first thing that you look at is the writing. In this case, I had the reference of the original Doctor Foster. It is an interesting part and I haven’t done anything similar before.

Adultery has been dealt with in films, TV shows and web series. Was there a reason you felt the treatment was unique?

I think it was because of the stance that the protagonist takes and the way she deals with it. And treating it like a thriller is quite a unique way of dealing with the subject, which hasn’t been done before. You can say in Khoon Bhari Maang, the treatment was similar. But if you see the show, it has been dealt with very differently.

You play a 40 something father in the show and you are roughly the same age. Why does the idea of eternal youth not enamour you unlike most celebrities?

(Guffaws) I don’t think that it is celebrities alone. It affects everyone now. I find it largely annoying that everyone around me wants to stay young and youthful. There is a great joy in accepting who you are and how you are and it is nice to have the same energy and buzz which you had at a younger age. Only that it is a different kind of a buzz. It is energy with maturity. If you are holding on to what you were at 18 or 19, it is a recipe for stagnation. If we are looking at evolution, then you have to look at maturity. That is how I look at it rather than as getting old.

What is the character like?

(Laughs) Having just spoken of maturity, this character is quite immature. He is someone who is trying to hold on to that age and trying to feel young. He wants to experience the first flush of love. He is involved with a younger woman. Even in the interactions with his son, he is more like a buddy than a father. Akarsh has that thing about wanting to be 18 or 19 again and have that youthfulness without taking up the responsibility that comes with age. He tries hard to be a good father and a husband. He has a loving relationship with his wife where they have a great physical and romantic chemistry but he feels that he has too much of love to offer. And he has it for more than one person so he wants to disburse it.

A co-star is someone who can inspire a better performance. What does Rasika (Dugal) add to your character?

If there is one reason that one should see the show, it is Rasika. She is fantastic! She is a powerful actor and this is a perfect role for one and she has done justice to it. She is an absolute joy to work with. When you are two actors on a set, it is a dance of sorts. You throw something at each other, react to it and take it forward. When you have a great co-star, then you really enjoy giving back and doing things in tandem.

Coming back to your question, I think nobody could have made for a better Dr Meera Kapoor and it is a big responsibility to play the title part. I look at her as the protagonist and Akarsh, my character, as the conflict of the show. Both are important and would fall flat without each other. On the set, we were starting from a level that was quite high and then we tried to see how much higher we could take it.

Web series means uncensored content so often people try to use that to grab eyeballs by using titillation and unprecedented violence. Does it call for some amount of self-censorship on the part of the makers?

I think that it is essential for the audience to choose the makers of the show wisely. I don’t agree that censorship should exist in any form. What should exist is viewer’s discernment to choose what to watch. If I want to watch crass, then I will. There are creative people in the business and then there are people who claim to be creative and want to make money. It can also be their idea of creativity. Censorship implies treating the audience like children. Ye to bachcha hai, usey samajh nahin aayega. Humein isey yeh nahin dikhana chahiye violent ho jayega (A child should not be exposed to such content). An audience that has been treated like that becomes like that. You have to nurture and push creative thought. People who do that will have a following of people who want to watch such shows. Moreover, you as a journalist will talk about the shows that you enjoyed watching or found crass as you are the medium through which creativity ultimately reaches the reader and the consumer. Censorship should lie with people who make informed choices.

Moreover, a filmmaker might use sex in context and not just for titillation. Or maybe even to titillate because it is a creative process as he wants the viewer to be sexually aroused. For me, anything that is creative where a good writer and director are trying to take the audience on an emotional journey, which has many layers, should not be censored by an external agency. Even when the emotions are negative like anger, arousal or hate, these media help release them. If someone is feeling aggressive, they see that emotion on screen which can help them release that emotion. If I feel like shedding a tear and watching a great show or performance that takes me through an emotional journey which I connect with, I feel “Wow, that has helped me.” Monitoring and trying to control is wrong. The scary bit is that often you realise that people are getting the entertainment they want to see. Creative people have to accept that.

Content in the past two years has seen a drastic improvement. Is star power not enough to make any film a hit?

All through eternity, star power has not carried a film through. What it does is get the numbers. That is what star power is used for cleverly. I heard a story recently. I don’t know if it is true or not. Studios are looking at Instagram followers and casting people. It doesn’t matter if they are actors or not.

Having said that, many stars are great actors and that is why they are successful. For me, a star is a face that makes it easier for marketing. I am bringing its reference to your industry also. When you have a known person, it is easier for the PR to bring in the journalists as the readers want to see them on the cover. Carrying a project forward needs content and a lot of intelligent stars in our country move with the trends. If something is working, they position themselves in those films.

You have been a VJ and have also done films, TV and web series. How have the different media contributed to the journey?

I enjoy watching films more than anything else because in films, there is some sort of closure. In series, because they are trying to engage you for longer, it seems never-ending. I am not complaining on the career front (laughs) but I am talking in terms of a viewer.

But yes, I do get absorbed in a series. For instance, Doctor Foster, on which this is based, is a series I watched in one night. It was so good. On the internet, the content is pushing the bar in terms of creativity because there is a lot of money involved. Two, people are trying to make content that is great. Three, they are trying to capture an audience that had not had representation for a long time so they are trying to discover who this audience is and what they want. This is the audience that had stopped going to theatres because they were so disappointed with the kind of films that were being made. Suddenly, there is a platform where they can be entertained in large numbers, especially in India with its 1.3 billion people. So creativity is being pushed and they are trying new things. In next few years, people will go into little niches and see what works or find their own audience and try to keep them.

In the 22 years that I have worked, I have had a very consistent graph in terms of the amount of work that I do. I got some really good roles in films in the past. The web is for eternity unlike a film, where there is always the fear that if it does fail, it will be replaced on a Monday or a Thursday. People can watch a web series any time. So there is more possibility of people seeing my work on the web. I see it as a plus point.

I am pushing the creativity a bit on web. But then I have not done films which are run-of-the-mill stuff. Creativity is such a thing that when you see something or are exposed to something, it opens up your mind. My Brother Nikhil was released in 2005 and it had a very large impact in a positive way. I remember my very traditional uncle coming out of the film and saying, “I really enjoyed it.” He was taken by the friendship that Onir (the director) had displayed more than the love relationship. Today, you have a country which has legalised homosexual relationships. The film set the ball rolling. (Pauses) I’ve gone on chatting so much that I’ve lost my train of thought. (Guffaws).

I will come back to the original question that what is the difference between the three. As an actor, whether you are acting in films, web or TV, you are acting as someone else. I think about the medium that I am performing for to decide the level of performance or how I want to play things out. When you are hosting a show, you are really being yourself and not anyone else. You are really functioning from being Purab Kohli. That is the straightforward answer to your question. (Laughs)

You have anchored shows on Channel V, which at the time was a purely music channel. What would you say about the way such channels have changed their formats?

I am not from the business end of the channels so maybe I am the wrong person to comment. But yes, I know how it works. I remember having a chat with my boss who said that Channel V never made money but was seen adding value to a bouquet of channels and was sold as a youthful, trend-setting, fashionable music channel, which made the entire package look great. But when that shifted and they wanted to make money out of the channels, they became mini-GECs (General Entertainment Channels). These were no longer trendsetting channels. Also, with the birth of internet, Instagram moved cool people to the web, you find many of them there and you don’t find people like us on television. Also, a larger audience has become ‘cool’. Satellite TV came to India in 1993-94 and in 1999, we joined Channel V as the first bunch of Indian VJs as earlier, there were only foreigners. We were the door openers to that ‘cool’ space. Let us not call it cool as it means different things to different people. We can rather call it the unexplored space. That gateway is now wide-open and there are a lot of gate-keepers who are all on Instagram.

How did Hip Hip Hurray happen?

It was very random. I come from a film family. Actors, directors and technicians have always been around me while I was growing up. But I never wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be a pilot. This was in 1995-96 when Jet Airways had just started and was the first non-government airlines that was flying one flight a week. It was ridiculous. And then Vayudoot had shut down. It was a very fragile time in the airline business which seems to have carried on forever (laughs). It is very sad to see the collapse of Jet Airways because when I started travelling and flying around, it was an airline that people were proud about as it was something that was really Indian with international standards.

But then, this is besides the point as this is not what the interview is about. I was training to become a pilot. I realised it was going to be very hard to get a job after the very expensive course. I was very conscious at a young age about taking too much money from home. I wanted to go out and do my own thing. It was at this time that my aunt, who is very close to my family, said that “a friend who is a budding director is looking for new faces and you are a decent looking guy. Why don’t you go and just meet her?” So I decided to do just that. Nupur Asthana, the director, called me to the UTV office for audition. I thought I would just go and chat with them. During the audition, there were two people including Nilanjana Sharma, who later played Mona. We did some improvisations and jigs, I don’t even know what we were doing. But we were certainly having fun. After 10 days, I was called for a second round to Nupur’s house. I took along two friends and told them that I will quickly go in and say that I don’t want to do it as I am not interested. When I reached, the entire cast was there. I was probably the last one to arrive. I walked in and realised that I couldn’t say this in front of everyone. So my friends were out there waiting for me for a good 45 minutes to an hour. These were pre-mobile phone days and I couldn’t call them to tell them that I was stuck. During that time, I started chatting with some of them. One or two of them were with me in school or college and I realised they are not a bad bunch of people. I don’t mind hanging out with them. It will be like a weekend shooting and I could still go to college from Monday to Friday. Moreover, it would mean extra money. I was getting Rs 800 from my father and this would give me Rs 5,000, which sounded really good. The shoot was a party and I never looked at it as work. There was this energy which can never be recreated. We were 12 innocent kids, who were having a great time and that is what translated on screen as well. When we moved out into the world, we were bitten by the television bug and got famous. The energy started changing. Nupur realised it and decided to end the show.

Most people who come from a film family usually have a huge launch. You didn’t want to take that route?

Like I said, I never wanted to be an actor. In fact, when I did Hip Hip Hurray, my lovely grand uncle, who was very close to my family, called me and asked me to meet him.

Yes, Dev sa’ab was known to launch newcomers...

No, this was not Dev sa’ab. It was his brother Goldie Uncle, Vijay Anand, who was very close to my family. I remember him calling me and telling me, “Tu bohot acha lagta hai screen pe (You look very good on screen). You are quite a good actor but you need to loosen up a bit. Why don’t you come and work with me?” But I did not want to be an actor. I was so caught up having fun that I told him, “Uncle, I don’t really want to act. I am doing that because I am having fun and making some money. All my friends have gone to America to study. And I want to do the same.” And with that, my opportunity to work with one of the greatest directors went down the drain. I had some great interactions with him as grand uncle. But not the opportunity to actually sit down and work with them. Now I have the maturity to look at it. That is why I don’t want to be stuck at 18! (Guffaws) It all connects.

When did you finally decide that you wanted to be an actor?

After My Brother Nikhil. I remember watching it at a screening that Onir had done for a very suppressed community, that of HIV+ people, in the theatre. And they were so moved by the film that it broke my heart. I said to myself, “What a powerful medium!” That is the moment I started growing up. Today, when we speak about them, I don’t know how many of them are alive. And to see their representation in the film and a story being told about them, I really felt the power of cinema. Even now as I am telling you this story, it is giving me goosebumps. I was lucky to have that experience. That is when I sat back and said that “this is what I can do because this is the impact that it can have on people. And if I have been given the skill by this universe, I need to exercise it as much as I can.”

I live in London and work in India so everything becomes very calculated as every project means leaving my family behind for long periods. There is so much happening now that it is easy to get stuck in the wave of doing a lot of work and I have never done that. I tend to sit back and watch what is happening. Out of Love is a great show which is quite impactful in its storytelling. It is a good representation of the female story. I hope they all don’t go out and start doing what she does. (Guffaws) But none the less, it is quite empowering.

What do you do when you are not working?

There is a little tech business that I am involved in. I give some time there. I am also a father of two children and I try to spend as much time with them as possible because once I am at a shoot, it extends for long hours. Even if they are at the location, I get very little time with them. There is also some writing that I do. These three things take my time besides reading 150 scripts a day. (Laughs)

(The show is streaming on Hotstar.)