When City of Joy turns into a city of mystery

A still from ‘Brown’. Pics/Youtube

Within five minutes of meeting director Abhinay Deo, Jisshu Sengupta gave his nod to Brown, led by Karisma Kapoor. That made us wonder what Deo might have said to sell the ZEE5 crime series so easily to the actor. "He said, ‘You haven't done something like this before'," recalled Sengupta.

The actor elaborated, "I've played a lot of different characters. But the writing of this character was different from what I've done earlier."

The Bengali star was recently seen in Hindi offerings, ‘Bhooth Bangla', ‘Mardaani 3', and ‘The Trial'

While that was one incentive to join the show, the other was Kolkata, his hometown. "I have never seen Kolkata the way it has been shown in this series, [despite] being born and brought up here," he shared.

A 29-year career spanning Bengali cinema and other languages has enabled Sengupta to be part of mainstream as well as independent films. He might have focused on "realistic stories" in the past few years, but he holds mainstream movies in high regard. Simply because doing them is far tougher than people assume. "Who thinks it's easy? Dancing, having a fight sequence, and doing a high-pitched dramatic scene is not easy. You have to convince yourself, first and foremost, that you are dancing in Switzerland, or that a blast is happening behind you."