‘You need to learn every day in film industry’

Around 350 films and four decades later in cinema, it may be a ‘little difficult’ to reinvent, said Bengali star Prosenjit Chatterjee, who is on a quest for interesting parts with no language bar.

The actor is basking in the success of not one but two projects that were released around the same time last month: the ‘Prime Video’ series ‘Jubilee’ and the Bengali film ‘Shesh Pata’. The titles see him play creative men who are apart like ‘north and south poles’.

In Vikramaditya Motwane’s ‘Jubilee’, he essayed the role of Srikant Roy, a cinema patron and shrewd studio owner, whereas the Atanu Ghosh-directed ‘Shesh Pata’ featured Prosenjit Chatterjee as a renowned writer named Balmiki Sengupta, who now lives in obscurity.

“I am enjoying every bit of this moment. It is not about ‘Jubilee’ alone, but also due to ‘Shesh Pata’, in which I play a writer, who is an absolutely different character. At the same time, you have ‘Jubilee’, where the character has an aura, power and is a creative person,” Prosenjit, 60, told the top news agency in an interview in Mumbai.

He added, “I want to reinvent myself every day. I want to give new experiences to the audience. People have seen my 345 films and now it is becoming a little difficult because, in the last eight to 10 years, I have played so many different characters. Now, I am also like, ‘What new do I give to the audience?’ I have taken everything as a challenge.”

The Kolkata-born actor, son of cinema veteran Biswajit Chatterjee, said his endeavour is to learn something new about cinema every day.

“If you are in this industry, you need to learn every day and every moment. I always say, ‘I am a student of cinema and I live with cinema’. If somebody comes to me for half an hour and if he or she talks about a story, I can spend around four to five hours with them because I love to hear things about the cinema. I am too much into it,” he said.

Known for seamlessly gliding through genres, mediums and languages with titles such as ‘Moner Manush’, ‘Mahanayak’, ‘Chokher Bali’ and ‘Shanghai’, Prosenjit Chatterjee said that he broke out of every mould he was cast into.

“When I started out in Bangla cinema, people said I was a chocolate boy. ‘He is like his father’, they said. But I wanted to come out of that image. Then I started doing action. It was like, in every film, there has to be action,” the actor shared.

“When I used to go to gatherings, people would say, ‘He is earning money from dancing, doing the action, etc’. I thought I wanted to do something that would make people look at me differently. I started with black-and-white films, then colour happened,” said the actor, who made his acting debut at the age of five with Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Bengali film ‘Chotto Jigyasa’ in 1968.

Srikant Roy or Roy Babu, as he is often addressed in Prime Video’s show, appears to be modelled on Himanshu Rai and Guru Dutt, two of the pioneering personalities of the golden age of Indian cinema. According to Prosenjit, Vikramaditya Motwane’s brief was to bring alive the ‘Indian godfather’ in the showbiz of the 1940s and 1950s.

While shooting a scene of ‘Jubilee’, in which people salute his character Srikant Roy entering his studio ‘Roy Talkies’, the actor said that he was reminded of Guru Dutt’s classic ‘Kaagaz Ke Phool’ (1959).

“This was my dream. Anything related to Guru Dutt; I am a huge fan of that. Motwane’s brief was more about the Indian godfather. He is a decision-maker. They do not have a peaceful end, but whatever this man says has to be done. All the characters in ‘Jubilee’ have a lot of shades and that is the beauty of it. It is not a biopic, but it has a mixture of a lot of characters,” he said.

Prosenjit, who will next be seen in Hansal Mehta’s series ‘Scoop’, said that he will continue to do projects that appeal to him, irrespective of the language.

“Something should challenge me. It is not that I am going to sign 10 Hindi films right now. I am not bothered by the language. The character has to be great. I am happy with what I am doing. I do two to three films every year and that has been my benchmark for the last 10 years,” he added.

A fan of Fahadh Faasil and Subodh Bhave, the actor wishes to work in Malayalam and Marathi films.