Nimisha Sajayan: Versatile Crossover Queen: Thumbs Up; Babita Singh Reporting. Suspended ASI Babita redeems reputation by solving a murder with a personal twist. USP: Playing the strong silent woman overcoming silence, social conditioning, and circumstance.
Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, and Sparsh Shrivastava: Thumbs Up; Laapataa Ladies. Two brides are accidentally separated from their husbands on a train, and a deceptively simple story about female identity, education, marriage, and the right to choose.
Amol Parashar: Thumbs Up; Gram Chikitsalay. A young Delhi doctor takes charge of a dysfunctional village health centre and, while battling bureaucracy, superstition and local distrust, gradually learns what it means to practise medicine in rural India.
Why should anyone not switch channels when a particular show appears? The answer is as old as cinema: stars, stories, and reliability. Then what makes Nimisha Sajayan, Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, Amol Parashar, and Sparsh Shrivastava TV stars—ironically, Laapataa Ladies starring Goel, Ranta, and Shrivastava became an even bigger hit after streaming on OTT. What makes the character and the film compulsory viewing and what is the ‘IT’ factor behind their star power?
The binding leitmotif is the sense of uncertainty felt by most of India’s Gen Z outside the big city. Parashar brings to Prabhat not the confidence of the man who knows he belongs, but the guarded energy of someone still figuring out where he does. Jaya does not have to reject her family for an education. Phool does not begin hers as a revolutionary, but simply learns that she has a right to know what is happening around her. Deepak’s evolution lies in learning that being a good husband may mean questioning what he has been taught. Babita’s transformation is less dramatic: from being a wife, daughter-in-law, and subordinate officer to seeing herself in Babita. Prabhat arrives in the village with a pre-definition of progress but learns that people cannot simply be “fixed” from outside. The appeal of these stories lies in recognition by the audience, and of the audience. The characters know the rituals, compromises, and codes of small-town India, but they also know smartphones, need for education, migration, social media, and the vocabulary of aspiration. Their aspiration is less about the rural or small town geography of their upbringing and more about possibilities of success. That is why Panchayat became such an important precursor. Jitendra Kumar as Sachivji arrives in Phulera but wants to escape it; over time, the village stops being the place where his career stalled but becomes a place where relationships, affection, and purpose accumulate. Gullak, too, made the middle-class North Indian household not as a backdrop but as a universe worthy of close observation. There are other versions of this shift: Raghubir Yadav’s Brij Bhushan in Panchayat, Vaibhav Raj Gupta’s Anand in Gullak, Raghav Juyal’s Guddu in Killer Soup, Monika Panwar’s Gudiya in Jamtara, and even the ensemble of Maamla Legal Hai belong to different genres, but share a common instinct: the ordinary person must no longer become extraordinary before the story begins.
Perhaps that is what is changing about Indian stardom. The new streaming star does not always enter the frame looking like someone the audience has been waiting to see. They understand their role—which they are familiar with in real life—and tell their stories. She looks like someone they already know. A daughter whose family doesn’t “get her”. A boy who left home to make something of himself. The self-discovery of a woman who earlier had to apologise before speaking. An engineer who has abandoned the respectable career his degree promised him. All these stories are aspirational without being totally metro. They are traditional without being conventionally conservative and modern without needing to perform modernity. They are characters caught between inheritance and reinvention. That tension is increasingly where Indian streaming is finding its stars—the defining difference between this generation and the small-town characters of earlier Hindi cinema.
Traditionally, aspiration meant escape. The small-town or village boy or girl goes to Delhi, Mumbai, or some imagined metropolitan promised land but the new stars do not always want to leave. They seek the power to think for themselves, make independent choices, and take actions that shape their own lives within the lives they already inhabit. Jitendra Kumar’s journey is revealing. The former civil engineer from IIT Kharagpur, “came to Mumbai without a job. I did a sketch and put that on YouTube. It was important that my work be appreciated. I said either I have to act or take up a job,” he says. This is one of the best new routes to recognition: never has the digital work been more recognisable: YouTube, Instagram and even the banned TikTok. Kumar taught Physics in Mumbai to earn his daily bread before Permanent Roommates changed the trajectory of his career. “The response it received gave me the confidence to quit coaching and dive fully into acting. After that came Pitchers, which gained immense popularity. Things just took off from there. After Panchayat there has been no looking back,” he says. This trajectory is distinctly contemporary: the internet becoming a proving ground before the traditional industry becomes a destination. His story also points to a broader change in who gets to imagine a creative career.
The streaming ecosystem has made acting seem less like an improbable leap into an opaque industry and more like one of several possible professional choices. Akash Makhija, who appeared in Raakh and Gram Chikitsalay, remembers how closed to outsiders the industry was once. “I belonged to a time when there was only television and cinema. Forget getting an opportunity in films, even entering the offices of big production houses was a huge deal,” he says. The difference now, he argues, is not simply the number of streaming platforms but the changing value placed on recognisable faces: a factor common to multiplex cinema. “But there are many people like me in the market. Today, looks are not important. People like to see faces that they can relate to. They can easily connect with such people.” Relatability then and now works. Amitabh Bachchan in Coolie, Dharmendra in Sholay, Rajesh Khanna in Aradhana, Jaya Bachchan in Zanjeer, Rakhee in Sharmelee, Sharmila Tagore in Kashmir ki Kali—one is not even entering the cloned world of the three Khans. The young viewer doesn’t necessarily need the elaborate mythology of a traditional movie star. Their millennial fathers, too, have been drawn into that arc. Familiarity comes from somewhere else: an accent, a face, a body type, a hometown, a way of speaking to parents, and even the awkwardness of navigating an arranged marriage or a first job.
The generation coming of age in India today is often described by thinking heads and editorial writers through metropolitan markers: social media, dating apps, global fashion, digital entrepreneurship, etc. But there is another Gen Z, and a much larger youth population alongside it, growing up in smaller cities and towns, but connected to the same digital universe. They are exposed to global culture but may not abandon local codes. They are deeply invested in family, but simultaneously question familial authority. They participate in rituals while challenging the assumptions behind them. They can aspire to an IIT, a government job or a corporate career, and still want to pursue music, acting, content creation or entrepreneurship. The contradiction is the story. Laapataa Ladies understands this phenom particularly well. Its women are not simply rebelling against tradition; they are asking which parts of tradition are ones they must retain and which parts to be renegotiated. Panchayat succeeds on such a similar tension. Sachivji or Abhishek initially sees Phulera as a place he is forced to enter because his larger ambitions have stalled. Yet his relationship with the village gradually changes. It is no longer an obstacle to his future but a scene of self-discovery. Gullak has drama in the intimate space of the Indian middle-class family where generations live under the same roof but increasingly have different ideas of work, money, marriage—and independence. In their mind the lines have merged: Covid-19 and Gen Z and Gen Alpha protests against governments’ failures make them one.
The then-and-now distinction in the entertainment industry is the cinema ticket vs the remote control. Box office collections encouraged the Bollywood model to depend on scarcity: limited number of screens, Friday openings, familiar faces, and the ability to bring an audience into a theatre at the same time. Streaming has replaced some of that scarcity with abundance—more actors, more stories, more languages, and more ways to discover a performance. That creates competition, but it also means an actor can arrive from almost anywhere. Bhuvan Arora, who found widespread recognition as Firoz in Farzi, describes the change simply: “Content is king now and it’s a great time for a lot of actors.” He also sees the distinction between cinema and streaming becoming increasingly irrelevant. “The line between movies and OTT platforms has been blurred with the advent of the smartphone. I agree that the theatre-going experience is magical, but the audience loves watching web series. I think it’s time we break these jargons and move on.”
Perhaps that is where the new streaming generation differs most sharply from the old star system. The question is no longer simply who can sell a Friday. It is who can hold attention after the Friday is gone. Filmmakers Raj & DK point to precisely this advantage when they talk about the longer shelf life of a series: “You can watch it one week later. You can watch it six months later and maybe you can watch the season two as well. As a creator, you want to have the longest life for your product.” For a generation accustomed to discovering people and stories long after their original release, that matters. A performance does not necessarily have to arrive with a marketing blitz. It can travel through recommendations, clips, memes, conversations, and word of mouth. The streaming revolution may not have abolished the old idea of stardom, but certainly has widened the route to it and the profile. The screen has become smaller, but the pool of people who can see themselves on it has become larger. And for India’s young, aspirational audience, that recognition may be as important as glamour: they are not merely watching people become stars. They are watching versions of themselves becoming possible on screen. This may explain why the streaming star increasingly looks less like a category and more like a collection of contradictions. Which is also why they negotiate the bridge between screens— small and big—and vice versa. An IIT graduate who becomes an actor. A child actor who grows into a leading performer. An established film actor who discovers a second phase of her career online. With the fading of ‘art cinema,’ the character-actor has suddenly become a face audiences remember. Monika Panwar’s experience captures this fluidity. After Jamtara and Khauf, she found opportunities to act in films including Dukaan and Nishaanchi. “For me, the question of whether it is an OTT or a theatrical release rarely arises. Coming from a theatre background, I prioritise a powerful story above all else; that is what I always pursue,” she says. Arjun Bijlani makes a similar point in another stage of his career. “I would rather choose a character that genuinely challenges me and gives me an opportunity to perform. If that one performance connects with the audience and changes their perception of me, that’s a wonderful bonus. But for me, the process of becoming a better actor is more important than chasing one defining moment.” The irony is that this less star-driven ecosystem may ultimately create a different kind of star. Not someone who is necessarily larger than life, but someone whose life feels recognisable.
Shweta Tripathi, who has won acclaim as Golu in Mirzapur, is wary of the growing perception of OTT as a “second screen”. “Our attention span has become very less. It is scary that people get distracted easily,” she says, arguing that audiences have the power to demand richer, more varied storytelling. At the same time, Tripathi is frustrated by the limited opportunities for women-led films: “I am envious of the parts the boys play.” Like Adarsh Gourav, Radhika Madan, and Zahan Kapoor, who have used streaming to move beyond conventional Bollywood archetypes—Gourav with The White Tiger and Guns & Gulaabs, Madan with Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo and Ray, and Kapoor with Black Warrant—Tripathi is choosing to be selective rather than chase visibility. She has not signed a new project since Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein, and is instead developing ideas with writers and directors, including filmmakers she has worked with before. “You have to work hard and passionately. There is so much talent waiting to be explored.”
And that brings the story back to Babita, Phool, Jaya, Deepak, and Prabhat. They are not conventional heroes because the India they represent is no longer conventionally divided between tradition and modernity. It is messier. It is an India in which a young woman can want education without wanting to abandon her family; where a man can question inherited ideas of masculinity without rejecting his roots; where an IIT graduate can walk away from engineering; where a small-town actor can become a national face without first acquiring the polish of a metropolitan star. There is a big ‘Because’ here.
Because looks could be replaced by recognisability. The old Hindi film system required an actor to look like the lead even before being getting the opportunity to become one. OTT reversed that sequence. An actor could enter as an unfamiliar face playing an ordinary person, and become a star through performance itself. Laapataa Ladies is a clear example. Goel, Ranta, and Shrivastava did not arrive with established Bollywood star images. Their unfamiliarity allowed audiences to meet Phool, Jaya, and Deepak before encountering the celebrities behind them. OTT allows character recognition to precede celebrity.
It gave actors something cinema often doesn’t: Time. A two-hour-long film has to establish characters relatively quicker than a series which builds up the actor by accumulating small things: a look, a hesitation, an irritation, a joke, the way they speak to their mother, the way they behave when nobody is watching. Nimisha Sajayan’s appeal as Babita isn’t contained in just one dramatic scene. Sparsh Shrivastava’s Deepak becomes lovable because the audience munching popcorn on their couch spends enough time with him to clue into his awkwardness, decency, and capacity to change. OTT has turned actors’ ‘personality’ into narrative capital without stereotyping them. The opening weekend could be replaced by word of mouth.
Perhaps the biggest change is that OTT makes these ‘ordinary’ faces commercially useful—why a Jitendra Kumar could become a major streaming presence through characters who looked and sounded recognisably Indian. The audience didn’t have to be wowed. It no longer says starstruck: “This person is a movie star.” Instead it thinks, “I know this guy,” “I know this girl”. Interestingly the second thought becomes the first. The audience bcomes an accomplice in creating the star. When viewers feel that they have ‘discovered’ the young giants of OTT, there is the sense of ownership. “We knew them.”
OTT has created characters who can change their trajectory without becoming heroes. For example, a Naseeruddin Shah or a Shabana Azmi appeared in both popular and parallel cinema, but still their stardom was niche. But Goel, Ranta, and Shrivastava are getting there, commercially and celeb-wise. Abhishek in Panchayat doesn’t become a conventional hero while Smita Patil once played the unconventional heroine but somehow never transitioned into super stardom. Deepak doesn’t become a macho hero. Babita doesn’t become a supercop. Prabhat doesn’t become the man who single-handedly fixes the village. They change, which is enough for the audience.
India’s young, aspirational audience are not merely watching people become stars. They are watching versions of themselves becoming possible.
The Second Act
For actors who had already established themselves in Bollywood but later found fewer substantial parts, streaming has offered a different kind of opportunity: not simply work, but reinvention. Saif Ali Khan, among the first Bollywood names to make the leap to OTT with Sacred Games, recalls, “One never expected that web series would do so well; with the pandemic, people needed entertainment and this grew. I am so glad that we are all getting roles that we never imagined about; there was so much depth to it.” Sushmita Sen’s Aarya took her into a darker world of power, vulnerability and survival. Madhuri Dixit Nene’s The Fame Game played against the glamour of her own star image, exploring the unsettling underside of a celebrity. And for Bobby Deol, Aashram became a career resurrection. “I never imagined OTT would happen for me,” Deol reveals. When Prakash Jha offered him the role in Aashram, he assumed he was being considered for a policeman. Instead, Jha offered him Baba. “I told him I had never performed anything like this before. He said, ‘Just follow the script, don’t watch anything and believe in yourself.’” The reaction surprised Deol. “When I did the series, I was amazed by the reaction. It was something I had never earned all these years, even with my movies.”
His elder brother Sunny Deol sees the expansion more broadly. “A lot of doors have opened now. Earlier we only had cinema, but now we have so many avenues. If a film does not work at the theatres, we have OTT now. We get a chance to do something different. We don’t have to always do heavy-duty roles, and we want to portray other roles too.”
Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor found a new screen life on OTT, with Tandon making her digital debut in Netflix’s Aranyak, and Kapoor in ALTBalaji-ZEE5’s Mentalhood, both taking on roles that marked a departure from their earlier film careers. For these actors, streaming has effectively extended the possibilities of a career. It allows familiar faces to step outside established images, take on mature or unexpected characters and reconnect with audiences on different terms.