Ritwik Bhowmik on the pressure of social media following on young actors: I am an anomaly of this process

Ritwik Bhowmik has made a niche for himself on the web space with projects like Bandish Bandits and Khakee: The Bengal Chapter to his name. The actor admits that he doesn’t fit in the quintessential Hindi film here—with a sculpted physique and a large social media following. Yet, he has been able to pave his way. Ask him how and he says, “I have to give credit to all the makers of my projects.”

Ritwik Bhowmik elaborates, “They fully put their trust in me, irrespective of the number of social media followers I had or if I didn’t look like the quintessential leading man. They just saw if I fit the part; I don’t think they even checked my Instagram account. Those makers don’t care about such stuff, all they care about is what is right for the project. So far, I have been navigating well because I have been able to meet makers who just care about if I fit the part or not.”

But being a young generation actor where Instagram followers have become a pre-requisite for acting, does he feel the pressure of engaging in that side of the business? “I am an example of the anomaly in this process. I am not as much active on Instagram, but fortunately, quite active as an actor. That just shows it’s not relevant everywhere,” he responds.

Even though his real life image as well as on screen image has been of the ‘guy next door’ till now, with Khakee, he got to break that mould by playing a gangster. Talking about getting to explore his potential due to OTT shows, he says it helps him connect more with his audience. “I feel it's human nature that whenever we don’t understand something fully or find it unique, it takes our attention. I am blessed to have that in my career path as any image that the audience makes of me, it breaks in the next project. Jis din main samajh mein aa gaya, us din main ek button ban jaunga,” he says.

Elaborating on his analogy, Ritwik shares, “Every actor in the industry is a button on the remote of a television as every actor has a signature, like for romance the audience would see (Shah Rukh) Khan sahab, for comedy they’d see Akshay (Kumar) sir and more. Every actor becomes a button after a point as it is destiny and every actor goes through that.”

He adds, “I am sure I will also become a button one day when the audience understands me. But till the time I get this time to explore, I am going to use it to the fullest. After that, even I am looking forward to becoming a button, as that is what is called stardom. When you become a star, you represent a narrative and become an image. I’ll be glad to be an image and be at everybody’s home and be accessible. But until that happens, I really want to choose how to be an actor.”