For an actor with more than two decades in the industry, Vikrant Massey still remembers exactly how dismissively he was once spoken about.
Reflecting recently on his move from television to film, he pinned the scepticism he faced squarely on his small screen roots, recalling that many in the industry doubted him purely because of where he had come from, with people openly saying he was just a TV actor and would not know how to work.
Massey’s experience sits inside a pattern that has trailed Hindi cinema for years. Actor Hiten Tejwani, who has worked across both mediums, has previously noted that unlike in the West, parts of the Indian industry still hold onto a divide between television and film performers, adding that casting television actors can get difficult because of a perception that they are overexposed.
Radhika Madan has spoken about being told outright not to attempt the switch when she was starting out, before pointing to Sushant Singh Rajput’s own successful crossover as proof it could be done. Massey’s recent comments in the media land as a fresh, high profile addition to that same long running conversation, made all the more pointed by his own now established presence in film.
He is firm, though, that the bias was never really about television specifically. Massey argued that background of any kind, professional or socio-economic, has no bearing on genuine ability, and that capability comes down entirely to an individual’s own skill rather than where they started out.