Badhaai Ho: Character actors turn leading lights of Hindi cinema

Gajraj Rao is in disbelief. The 50-something actor of Badhaai Ho (2018) fame is finally getting to play leading roles of his liking in films and web series after spending three decades in the industry. What’s more, he’s able to charge a fee on his own terms, with negligible resistance from producers of the Hindi film industry, the largest in the country by audience size – over 520 million.

“A decade ago, if someone told me they had written a role for me, I would have thought they were mocking me,” said Rao, who is also an ad film director. Today, he has headlined movies like Thai Massage (2022), which reportedly trended on Netflix India in the first spot during the second week of January this year.

“I was emailed the entire script of Bholaa (2023) even though I had only a guest appearance in the recently released movie. Earlier, people only sent the pages that carried my scene,” the actor said.

For someone who admits to having spent 25 of his 30 years in cinema doing minor roles for little-to-no money, these changes are rather significant. “I never thought I’d get to see days like these,” he said.

Senior character actors such as Rao, who had been relegated to the supporting cast for most of their careers, are having their moment in the spotlight – well into their 40s and 50s.

Fee at Bollywood levels
The likes of Neena Gupta, Shefali Shah, Pankaj Tripathi, Jaideep Ahlawat, Sanjay Mishra and Manoj Bajpayee are playing central roles in movies and web series, the preserve of younger artistes thus far. Further, most of these mature actors are charging 10 times the fee they were able to command less than five years ago.”There’s been an exponential change in their fee structure, with many of these senior actors’ pay going from Rs 25-30 lakh to Rs 1-4 crore per project within the last four to five years,” said a producer closely associated with movies and shows featuring senior character actors in lead roles.

To put it in perspective, “their current fee is commensurate with what most mid- to top-tier female lead actors are making,” said a celebrity manager who prefers not to be named.

A middle-aged character actor was offered Rs 2 crore for playing the lead in a web series, said a producer in the know, on the condition of anonymity. “When the show gained popularity, the actor is known to have charged Rs 15 crore for the second season,” the person said. “He may get up to Rs 35 crore if the platform renews the show for a third season.”

The last figure is comparable to what one popular lead male actor in his early 30s is charging after delivering one of the biggest box office hits (in Hindi) of 2022, added the producer quoted above.

OTT avenues
Senior character actors took centre stage in movies for a brief period in the aughts as well, said trade analyst Atul Mohan – Anupam Kher and Boman Irani starred in Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006), Vinay Pathak in Bheja Fry (2007) and Dasvidaniya (2008), and Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah in A Wednesday! (2008). “But it did not become a regular practice as the box office was still star-driven,” Mohan said.

A decade later, that changed with the advent of over-the-top (OTT) content platforms.

“So, even a story like Uunchai (2022) that is centred around the senior demographic – featuring Amitabh Bachchan, Anupam Kher and Boman Irani – turned profitable for the makers despite faring average at the box office because it made good money from ancillary sales, that is, platform licensing rights,” Mohan said.

The proliferation of streaming platforms has de-homogenised the audience and reduced the box office pressure that had turned “filmmaking into gambling, where you only want to bet on the winning horse,” Rao said.

Initially, Badhaai Ho – the story of a middle-aged couple getting pregnant and dealing with the consequent disapproval of a conservative society – was “supposed to be told from the parents’ point of view,” recalled Priti Shahani, founder of Tusk Tale Films, who was heading Junglee Pictures (one of the producers of the movie) at the time.

“It was rewritten from the point of view of the son because otherwise, casting the parents was becoming a challenge,” she said. “Once Ayushmann Khurrana was locked in for the son’s part, it gave us the freedom to cast the parents.”

But then the audience started noticing and appreciating the characters of Rao and Gupta in Badhaai Ho, or that of Tripathi in Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017) who then went on to play central roles in web series like Mirzapur and Criminal Justice, and Ahlawat in Raazi (2018), who headlined web series Paatal Lok.

“Since OTT platforms do not have the theatrical pressure but do need recognisable talent to drive not only subscriptions but also engagement, these actors started getting the weightage they had been missing all this while,” said Shahani.

[Disclaimer: Junglee Pictures is the movie studio division of The Times of India Group, which also publishes The Economic Times. Bareilly Ki Barfi and Raazi were also co-produced by this division.]

Pooja Kohli Taneja, managing director at FilmKaravan, cannot be happier about this shift. “As a producer, I have also faced the pressure of recovering money at the box office,” said the executive producer of the international Emmy Award-winning web series, Delhi Crime. “If I had a dollar for every time someone suggested I get an A-list actress to play the cop… But with platforms, you work within a budget instead of worrying about the theatrical collection.”

“I could get someone who looked believable as a cop, instead of getting a star. I remember during a Sundance screening, someone came up to Shefali Shah (who was cast as the show’s lead) asking if she is still in service or is a retired cop,” said Taneja.

Fresh tales
It’s not the advent of streaming platforms alone; even the audience’s palate has evolved to make room for diversity in storytelling and casting, said Mrinalini Khanna, vice-president, originals, Lionsgate India.

Filmmakers have traditionally shied away from telling stories of an older demographic because the majority of our population is young, she said. “But if young people only wanted to see stories featuring young people, then Breaking Bad, the American drama series about a middle-aged chemistry teacher, wouldn’t have attained the kind of global popularity it did,” she argued.

Khanna points out how Darlings (2022) subtly portrayed a young man, played by Roshan Matthew, hanging around the mother-daughter duo, played by Shah and Alia Bhatt, because he had feelings for Shah’s older character, even as everyone around him, and the audience, thought he had a soft spot for the daughter.

“It’s refreshing when stories highlight the life around them with such authenticity,” said Khanna.

Lionsgate India’s upcoming local project features senior actor Neetu Kapoor in a leading role opposite Sunny Kaushal, who plays the role of her son.

“The younger generations have seen their parents go through life-changing experiences rather closely during the pandemic,” Khanna said. “They are ready to see these stories, besides those of people turning millionaires in their 20s. How we depict growing older through our cinema is as important.”