THE NEW SUNDAY EXPRESS MAGAZINE VOICES DR VIKRAM SAMPATH NEHA SINHA S VAIDHYASUBRAMANIAM RAVI SHANKAR LUKE COUTINHO MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI BUFFET PEOPLE WELLNESS BOOKS FOOD ART & CULTURE ENTERTAINMENT SEPTEMBER 27 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 12 a g th OT Raghavm Juyandlreality TV into acgatininwiwiderT in g ed fro dance THE NEW OTT STARS Expand llywood, The Ba***ds of Bo ent acting roles work including rough his subsequ n recognition th scree Binge Brigade Pratibha Ranta Made her OTT mark as Shama in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heerama ndi: The Diamond Ba zaar, alongside her breakou t in Laapataa Ladies Arjun Bijlani Made his OTT acting debut as an NSG commando in ZEE5’s State of Siege: 26/11 Relatability, accessibility, and shared values have made these young actors the new stars of entertainment By SHAMA BHAGAT Nimisha Sajayan: Versatile Crossover Queen: Thumbs Up; Babita Singh Reporting. Suspended ASI Babita redeems reputation by solving a murder with a personal twist. USP: Playing the strong silent woman overcoming silence, social conditioning, and circumstance. Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, and Sparsh Shrivastava: Thumbs Up; Laapataa Ladies. Two brides are accidentally separated from their husbands on a train, and a deceptively simple story about female identity, education, marriage, and the right to choose. a e Jeetu JitendrfavouKuasmar rit e an OTT Becam iv Factory and Sach Bhaiya in Kota ade two roles that m Ji in Panchayat, dia’s s with In him synonymou g boom ce-of-life streamin sli Amol Parashar: Thumbs Up; Gram Chikitsalay. A young Delhi doctor takes charge of a dysfunctional village health centre and, while battling bureaucracy, superstition and local distrust, gradually learns what it means to practise medicine in rural India. Why should anyone not switch channels when a particular show appears? The answer is as old as cinema: stars, stories, and reliability Then what makes Nimisha . Sajayan, Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, Amol Parashar, and Sparsh Shrivastava TV stars—ironically Laapataa Ladies starring , Goel, Ranta, and Shrivastava became an even bigger hit after streaming on OTT. What makes the character and the film compulsory viewing and what is the ‘IT’ factor behind their star power? The binding leitmotif is the sense of uncertainty felt by most of India’s Gen Z outside the big city Parashar brings to . Prabhat not the confidence of the man who knows he belongs, but the guarded energy of someone still figuring out where he does. Jaya does not have to reject her family for an education. Phool does not begin hers as a revolutionary but simply learns that she has , a right to know what is happening around her. Deepak’s evolution lies in learning that being a good husband may mean questioning what he has been taught. Babita’s transformation is less dramatic: from being a wife, daughter-in-law, and subordinate officer to seeing herself in Babita. Prabhat arrives in the village with a pre-definition of progress but learns that people cannot simply be “fixed” from outside. The appeal of these stories lies in recognition by the audience, and of the audience. The characters know the rituals, compromises, and codes of small-town India, but they also know smartphones, need for education, migration, social media, and the vocabulary of aspiration. Their aspiration is less about the rural or small town geography of their upbringing and more about possibilities of success. That is why Panchayat became such an important precursor. Jitendra Kumar as Sachivji arrives in Phulera but wants to escape it; over time, the village stops being the place where his career stalled but becomes a place where relationships, affection, and purpose accumulate. Gullak, too, made the middle-class North Indian household not as a backdrop but as a universe worthy of close observation. There are other versions of this shift: Raghubir Yadav’s Brij Bhushan in Panchayat, Vaibhav Raj Gupta’s Anand in Gullak, Raghav Juyal’s Guddu in Killer Soup, Monika Panwar’s Gudiya in Jamtara, and even the ensemble of Maamla Legal Hai belong to different genres, but share a common instinct: the ordinary person must no longer become extraordinary before the story begins. Perhaps that is what is changing about Indian stardom. The new streaming star does not always enter the frame looking like someone the audience has been waiting to see. They understand their role—which they are familiar with in real life—and tell their stories. She looks like someone they already know. A daughter whose family doesn’t “get her”. A boy who left home to make something of himself. The self-discovery of a woman who earlier had to apologise before speaking. An engineer who has abandoned the respectable career his degree promised him. All these stories are aspirational without being totally metro. They are traditional without being conventionally conservative and modern without needing to perform modernity They are characters . caught between inheritance and reinvention. That tension is increasingly where Indian streaming is finding its stars—the defining difference between this generation and the small-town characters of earlier Hindi cinema. Traditionally aspiration meant escape. , The small-town or village boy or girl goes to Delhi, Mumbai, or some imagined metropolitan promised land but the new stars do not always want to leave. They seek the power to think for themselves, make independent choices, and take actions that shape their own lives within the lives they already inhabit. Jitendra Kumar’s journey is revealing. The former civil engineer from IIT Kharagpur, “came to Mumbai without a job. I did a sketch and put that on YouTube. It was important that my work be appreciated. I said either I have to act or take up a job,” he says. This is one of the best new routes to recognition: never has the digital work been more recognisable: YouTube, Instagram and even the banned TikTok. Kumar taught Physics in Mumbai to earn his daily bread before Permanent Roommates changed the trajectory of his career. “The response it received gave me the confidence to quit coaching and dive fully into acting. After that came Pitchers, which gained immense , Turn to page 2 Amol Parashar Shot to OTT fame as the irreverent, freewheeli ng Chitvan in TVF’s Tri pling, a role he credits with putting him on the map Nimisha SajayanT mainstream Broke into the OT d dian Kitchen, an with The Great In digital presence her further cemented bita Singh as the cop in Ba Reporting Zahan Kapoor Made his OTT breakthrough as the troubled, rookie jailer in Netflix’s Black Warra nt, earning widespread recognition for his layered performance a A r lov rzi, Bhuvoughn OTTrasothe a able Firoze in Fapoor’s on thr Broke of Shahid Ka for his portrayal earning acclaim ve friend , impulsi character’s loyal Monika a Panwgnitrion as co Rose to re tflix’s Gudiya in Ne bka Number Jamtara: Sa aking a Ayega, before m pact in Khauf strong im