Paan Singh Tomar Director Tigmanshu Dhulia Calls Mainstream Actors 'Terrible': They Can't Improvise

Filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia in a recent interview voiced his concerns about the slowdown in the Hindi film industry. Dhulia talked about the industry's lack of connection with the real India and attributed this disconnect to the gatekeepers' limited exposure. He also criticised mainstream actors for their inadequate language skills which eventually limits their ability to improvise.

What did Tigmanshu Dhulia say about mainstream actors?

In a recent interview on the Red Mike YouTube channel, Dhulia said in Hindi which can be loosely translated as “Our mainstream actors are incapable of improvising. They speak English all day at home, they get scripts in Roman, they can’t improvise, and that’s why they’re all terrible.”

Tigmanshu noted a subsequent decline in creativity because the filmmakers born and raised in Mumbai are failing to grasp the broader cultural landscape of India. The Paan Singh Tomar director detailed, “After the Partition, people from all over came to Mumbai. Bimal Roy came to Mumbai, Hrishikesh Mukherjee came to Mumbai, the Anand brothers and Prithviraj Kapoor came from Punjab… They brought their stories and culture with them. Then, they had children, and their children got married and settled down in Mumbai.”

He added, “These people were from Mumbai. They never saw the rest of India. The only time they’d go to Kashmir was probably to watch papa’s shooting. They travelled to London and New York. These children made films from their understanding of films; there should be a hero, songs, etc. The lack of evolution that we speak of, the emergence of formula films, stems from this.”

Tigmanshu Dhulia calls the audiences’ - Bewakoof

Further in the interview, Dhulia talked about a pivotal shift in the early 2000s with the emergence of a new wave of filmmakers, including himself who come from smaller cities. Not excusing the audiences’, Tigmanshu shared that they have become ‘bewakoof’ in comparison to what they were two decades ago.