Few actors have earned the right to critique Hindi cinema the way Manoj Bajpayee has. The Satya star has spent decades working his way from the margins to the marquee, and while promoting his new Netflix film Gajab Raat, he spoke openly about the talent the industry has let slip away.
Speaking to Zoom alongside co-stars Divya Dutta and Shraddha Das, Bajpayee said:
“Stereotyping is for many actors, and we have ruined talents just by doing that in this industry. I have always maintained that this industry has a bad reputation and bad karma of demolishing such great talents by reducing them to nothing on the set, in terms of the roles, in terms of the treatment that they have given to them. Many of the people went away, withered away without any recognition.”
'Only a quarter of me has been tapped'
Bajpayee doesn’t think he has escaped that waste himself. He estimates that filmmakers have so far drawn on only about a quarter of what he can do as an actor. He isn’t bitter about it, though. He described the gap as an artist’s natural hunger for more, and said he’s glad that drive is still with him after all these years.
Divya Dutta takes aim at the 'supporting actor' label
Dutta was even more blunt about how the industry sorts performers into categories. She said she dislikes being called a “supporting” or “character” actor. In her view, those labels are a shortcut that casting circles use when they can’t be bothered to understand what an actor actually brings, and the tag then becomes a ceiling.
She pointed to her own range as proof. She has played villains in some films and leads in others, and she recently carried the series Chiraiya largely by herself, to strong results. She argued that none of this should be reduced to a single slot. Her case was simple: performers like her see themselves as complete actors, and whatever scene they’re in, they’re the heart of it.
Bajpayee agreed. He traced the habit to a deep-rooted, almost colonial attachment to hierarchy, where everyone on a film is ranked as lead, character artiste or support. He said he lived through that ranking system and fought many private battles to get past it, but he believes its hold is finally weakening.
Streaming as the great equaliser
Both actors credit streaming platforms for the change. Bajpayee said actors in secondary roles were once routinely shortchanged, but many producers now make an effort to treat the whole cast fairly. He believes OTT has also transformed audiences. Families now watch closely, discuss characters in depth and can spot exactly where a story falters. He described sitting with a district magistrate’s family whose grasp of a show’s characters and flaws impressed him, and said he values that kind of living-room critique more than most professional reviews.