Saswata Chatterjee: Beyond Bob Biswas

Ever since he played Bob Biswas, contract killer and LIC agent in Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani in 2012, Saswata Chatterjee has been on Mumbai’s radar. The film industry loves to imitate success and had flooded him with a series of Bob Biswas clones. Chatterjee took his time, focusing on television and movies in Kolkata where he has a steady career. But when Anurag Basu offered him Jagga Jasoos (2017), he couldn’t say no. Chatterjee says he loved playing Jagga’s father, enjoying every minute of it. And now OTT has reintroduced him to his pan-Indian fans with two tautly written roles in The Night Manager on Disney+Hotstar and Netflix’s forthcoming series Tooth Pari. In The Night Manager, he plays the chief aide to Shelly (Anil Kapoor), the international arms dealer. It’s a role that the brilliant Tom Hollander played in the original and has him being nasty, mean, a bit of a rogue, but also very loyal to his boss. But it is as the ancient vampire David in Pratim Dasgupta’s forthcoming Tooth Pari that Chatterjee really comes into his own. A bit of a self-promoter, David has been around to give a series of historical figures valuable advice which has saved their careers, whether it was photographing a certain prime minister with children so the attention would veer from the women who swarmed around him or whether it was advising a progressive Mumbai painter to go barefoot to stand out among his peers. Of course, all of this is fictional but Chatterjee plays the character with so much élan that you almost believe it. He continues his career in Kolkata though. His biggest joy was being cast in the great filmmaker Mrinal Sen’s last film Aamaar Bhuvan (2018), where he portayed the role of Nur, the first husband of Sakhina, played by Nandita Das. It had an emotional connect for him, given that his father’s first film, Akash Kusum (1965), was with Sen. The late Shubhendu Chattopadhyay was a physician who became a popular romantic hero in Bengali cinema. “The circle was complete,” he says. For someone who was known as Shubhendu Chattopadhyay’s son for the first 10 years of his career, it was a particularly sweet moment.

Going South

There was a time when a Mumbai actor working in a film in the south was considered a last resort, especially for women. If they weren’t able to make it in Bollywood, a career in Tamil or Telugu was a distinct possibility. But now, every young actor wants a piece of the southern cake. Janhvi Kapoor is the latest to make the move with a role in Junior NTR’s untitled film directed by Koratala Siva, but she has been preceded by seniors such as Alia Bhatt who was in RRR, even if ever so briefly; Deepika Padukone, who stars with Prabhas in Nag Ashwin’s Project K; Kiara Advani who is with Ram Charan in S Shankar’s Game Changer; and Kriti Sanon who plays Janaki to Prabhas’ Raghav in Om Raut’s Adipurush. Everyone wants a bit of the southern stardust to rub off on them, even the men. Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan stars the who’s who of the Tamil film industry from Nayanthara to Vijay Sethupathi, with a cameo thrown in by Thalapathy Vijay, while Salman Khan’s forthcoming Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan features Venkatesh and Ram Charan in a lungi song—something Rohit Shetty first did in Chennai Express with Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone in 2013 with the Thalaiva tribute. Chennai Express was also Shah Rukh’s last big hit before Pathaan. What’s more, the Yash Raj Films’ spy universe now has Junior NTR on its roster, with the RRR star agreeing to be part of the second instalment of War, starring Hrithik Roshan as rogue RAW agent Kabir Dhaliwal.

Scene and Heard

Susanne Bier is a star at creating suspense and suspicion amidst the world of the elite and entitled. She did so in The Undoing and she returns to the genre with the star of the show, Nicole Kidman in the new Netflix show, The Perfect Couple, based on Elin Hilderbrand’s bestseller. Ishaan Khatter, an actor who is somewhat of a misfit in commercial Hindi cinema despite his best efforts, gets to play a critical role in this new Netflix show. Khatter, who made his Hindi debut in Dhadak (2018), has excelled outside the Bollywood straitjacket. He was good in Majid Majidi’s Beyond the Clouds (2017) and even better in Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy (2020). Perhaps, the universe is trying to send young Khatter a message to step up.

BollywoodcinemaIshaan KhatterJanhvi KapoorSaswata Chatterjee