Shreya Dhanwanthary steps into comedy for the first time with The Great Shamsuddin Family, breaking away from serious roles. The actor speaks about avoiding typecasting and criticises the industry’s growing obsession with social media numbers while casting
A still from the film
The third season of The Family Man showed us that Shreya Dhanwanthary can be one hell of an intelligence officer in a spy thriller. Can she be just as good in a comedy? That’s what she has tried to find out with The Great Shamsuddin Family, which dropped on JioHotstar on December 12.
“It’s my first comedic role. The film’s team had more faith in me than I had in myself [to pull this off]. So far, I’ve only done heavy-handed, serious roles, and it’s a privilege to be slotted in that category. But I want to show people that there are other things we can do, because as actors, we tend to get typecast,” she says, happy to find a place in Anusha Rizvi’s directorial venture that also stars Kritika Kamra and Juhi Babbar.
Shreya Dhanwanthary
Typecasting isn’t the only practice in the industry that irks Dhanwanthary. Having spent six years in Hindi cinema, the actor is cognisant of the pressure that the industry puts on artistes to chase “social media numbers”.
“I have a healthy relationship with social media. This race [of wanting more followers] is never-ending because if you chase numbers, you’ll never be satisfied. Having said that, I realise the reality of people getting cast based on their social media numbers, which is foolish. It reflects the larger deterioration of art in our society. You are making choices based on something that’s ephemeral. It’s problematic,” she says.
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