Rocket Boys actor Jim Sarbh: Bollywood is a commercial beast

In the past few years, Jim Srabh has increasingly dabbled with the OTT space, something that he says stems from the fact that he enjoys exploring the varied roles coming his way.

Sharing how his OTT projects have reintroduced him to his audience in a new way, something that couldn’t have been done via his films, the actor says, “Bollywood is a commercial beast. It works on numbers and none can say anything about those numbers.”

And that distinguisher and the lack of the number game is why OTT scores higher for Sarbh than theatrical projects.

“Within the OTT platforms there is a scope of working in different genre and I do things that are different. Also, many people have got chances they may not have before and that’s a good thing. So yes, that is also the case with me,” says the actor, who has been part of web projects such as Made in Heaven, Yeh Ballet, Taish, House Arrest and Smoke.

Further talking about how choices are made by him when talking up a Bollywood project, the 34-year-old, who has starred in films like Neerja (2016), A Death in the Gunj (2016), Padmaavat (2018) and Sanju (2018), says there are many reasons and elaborates, “Sometimes the role is interesting, sometimes the project is nice, sometimes it is the director and sometimes because you owe a favour to a director from earlier or your friends are in production team.”

However, when it comes to his OTT projects, he focuses solely on what value it has on offer for him as a performer, something that has happened in the case of his recent web series, Rocket Boys in which he plays Indian physicist Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha.

“I said yes to it immediately. It is nice to have a chance at Homi Bhabha. I did my research and fact checking while prepping for the character. But we had a great team and I trusted them. , I loved it, I like to prep hard and rehearse intensely. Even though I shot only 70 days last year for Rocket Boys, it feels like the whole year was Rocket Boys because so much time went into the prep,” he ends.