One of the surprises of Tandav is Dino Morea turning up as a scruffy political science professor. A canny presence, he forms the bridge between the campus and national politics. “My character, Jigar Sampath, is an important link between the students and politics,” Morea says.
“He drives the narrative in a major way.” Streaming on Amazon Prime, Tandav is Morea’s third consecutive OTT release. Prior to this, he appeared as a single father in Mentalhood and a sweetfaced assassin in Hostages Season 2.
Together, these shows mark a new resurgence for the actor, who had quit the mainstream in 2010 for some actorly soulsearching.
“The 2000s were a great time for me,” Morea recalls. “After that, though, the kind of terrible offers I was getting was really disheartening. I did not want to continue doing rubbish cinema.” Instead, he took a break and moved to Delhi for a year.
There, he trained under veteran acting coach NK Sharma, all while shedding his assumptions about the craft. The phase wasn’t easy, Morea admits, punctuated by fears of being forgotten. “After doing 15 films, I went back to acting class,” Morea says. “I had the same out-ofsight, out-of-mind insecurities that actors have. But I wanted to learn, and some good scripts did come my way.”