IC 814 The Kandahar Hijack’s Amrita Puri Shares Why OTT Has Changed Acting Game Completely | Exclusive (Image credit: Netflix)
Four More Shots Please! and Ranjish Hi Sahi star Amrita Puri‘s latest role features her as part of the ensemble cast of IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. In the hijack drama series, her character’s involvement limits her to the newsroom. She plays a print reporter covering the Indian Airlines hijacking, wanting to get to the truth of the event. The actress revealed how the Netflix show presents the changing of the guard from print to TV news. Moreover, Amrita commented on how OTT has changed the game for acting, melding the space between TV and film.
Amrita Puri on working with Dia Mirza and Anubhav Sinha
Luckily, for IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, the actress didn’t have to audition for her role. She revealed that director Anubhav Sinha already knew of her work since her debut in Aisha (2010). Amrita plays Nandini Martin, one of the key reporters at the India Headlines newspaper. Dia Mirza essays the role of her boss, editor Shalini Chandra.
Crediting Anubhav and co-writer Trishant Srivastava for their pivotal characters, Amrita shared, “They created a very strong side track for Dia and me and made our work very easy. It brought in such an important and relevant topic. This was at an especially important time which changed news because TV was just coming in. That battle hadn’t started. There was more integrity I feel when it was just print. There’s also a lot of pressure on TV journalists. How are we getting eyeballs? How are we making money? [Anubhav’s] brought in a very important part of, how did news get to where it is today.”
To prepare for her part, Amrita looked at whatever was available online and on YouTube. But mostly, she shaped her character from conversations with the director Anubhav who she felt had done enough research, almost like a journalist himself. She added, “[What] Anubhav has done beautifully is move from space to space. There was so much happening off ground. While all that drama was happening in IC 814, he’s brought in, which is very hard, all the narratives and complications on and off ground, in the plane, newsroom, very well. To give you a holistic picture, of how complicated a situation like that is.”
Amrita Puri on OTT changing TV and film landscape
While Dia and Amrita were part of a large ensemble that included Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Vijay Varma, Arvind Swamy, and many others, they shared their scenes only with each other. But even though they didn’t get to act alongside their other co-stars, director Anubhav invited them to the other sets to see how the show was shaping up, making them feel as if they were not working in isolation.
Amrita also commented on how the landscape had changed for actors in OTT. The actress said, “It’s changed the game completely. When I started with Aisha, TV was one world and film was one world. The two did not mix. If you moved from film to TV, it was considered taking a step down. And TV to film was a step up. It wasn’t nuanced enough. You were either the heroine and the main lead or the best friend or the sister. Opportunity-wise, there’s so much more. It’s also so much more interesting for audiences because of the kind of stories [available].”