Emraan Hashmi is all set to play the character of Raghu Khanna, son of a media mogul, in Disney+Hotstar’s Bollywoodland drama Showtime. was born to play Raghu Khanna.
In an exclusive interview with Deadline, Hashmi talked about how the character of Khanna led him to lean into personal experiences.
“When I first read the synopsis, which was just an idea set in the world of Bollywood and glitz at that point, I was intrigued,” Deadline quoted Hashmi as saying.
“I’ve had the experience in the industry for almost 25 years. I started off as an assistant director in 2001, before I made my film debut in 2003. I thought I could bring that experience to the table. I might not have been fully fledged producer, but as actor I have good rapport with them. Subconsciously, my experiences bleed into my character,” Hashmi said.
Hashmi said that there are dynamics involved in producing a film, and handling all of those is “nothing less than a mammoth task.”
“I might not be in sync with how international industries work, but when I saw the show Entourage a long while back I thought how it’s not very different to Bollywood,” the actor added.
“In any film business the dynamics are the same — Bollywood or Hollywood. It’s very cutthroat. The whole idea is to cut across these boundaries and get across to different cultures and present the industry how it is,” he added.
Showtime, produced under Karan Johar’s Dharmatic Entertainment, launched on Friday, March 8. In the series, Hashmi plays the role of Raghu, son of son of Viktor Khanna (Naseeruddin Shah), a former Bollywood producer, who distrusts his child to take over the running of his famed Victory Studios.
Hashmi said that Showtime has shades of the hit HBO series Succession since the Bollywood series is about news channels and the bloodline.
“Will the kids live up to the legacy of the father? It’s a whole case of entitlement – and that comes into the conversation of entitlement in our industry. There are these nepo kids who rise up and are able to take the legacy forwards, but there are a lot of variables at play. Some nepo kids don’t bring that legacy forward and it’s very unfortunate,” Hashmi pointed out.
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