3 min learnMumbaiCould 15, 2026 08:09 AM IST
Saif Ali Khan has been on the coronary heart of the streaming revolution in India. It started with him donning the uniform and the turban for the function of Sartaj Singh in Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane’s 2017 crime thriller present Sacred Video games, which laid the muse stone 0f Netflix in India. 9 years later, he’s donned the police uniform once more for Pulkit’s cop drama Kartavya, which drops on Netflix India on Could 15.
Saif remembers not feeling any apprehensions to take the leap from the large display screen to the small, although some warned it might be a demotion. “I wasn’t apprehensive in any respect, really. I bear in mind we had been on a vacation, and it got here by means of. I used to be so excited. There couldn’t have been a greater present to start out with, on cops and mafia from these administrators,” Saif tells SCREEN in an unique interview.
He, in reality, noticed Sacred Video games as what Narcos was to Columbia again then. “Netflix had simply completed Narcos, which had change into a global phenomenon. And we had been additionally hoping that for those who can inform an Indian story on a world platform, how cool would that be,” remembers Saif. He didn’t, for even a second, thought of it an “inferior” medium like tv.
“There was no confusion in my thoughts that this is able to separate utterly from tv, which for varied causes, is a distinct animal. The idea is to have pretty much as good a top quality as one can create. I don’t suppose the mindset must be that that is inferior in any strategy to a big-screen film expertise. That was the gamechanger for Netflix — to convey big-screen storytelling to a tool and make it intimate and thrilling on the identical time,” provides Saif.
Saif additionally lauds writers like Varun Grover and Smita Singh, who by no means dumbed down Vikram Chandra’s 800-page bestseller for its long-format onscreen adaptation. “We had the most effective writers attempting to be as intelligent as doable. Typically, we had been in setups the place there have been individuals who mentioned, ‘Will everybody perceive? Let’s attempt to convey it down slightly bit.’ However these guys had been speaking about Vasco de Gama,” says Saif, laughing and including that he “felt very a lot at residence, intellectually”. “It was a extremely good feeling. It was a no brainer for me,” he reiterates.
Additionally Learn — Amitabh Bachchan says he’s spending sleepless nights at 83: ‘Work is extra vital than sleep’
It helped that Saif has been a voracious reader for years. He was not solely conscious of the e book, but in addition managed to convey what was left unsaid between the traces by means of Sartaj in each season 1 and season 2 (2019). He reveals that his youthful sons — Taimur Ali Khan and Jehangir Ali Khan aka Jeh — are nonetheless discovering that he was a part of one thing as historic to the Indian streaming scene. “Simply yesterday, within the college library, Taimur pulled out a e book and mentioned, ‘Look, that is such a giant e book!’ (Laughs) It was Sacred Video games,” says Saif, signing off.