When the Microsoft outage brought the world to a standstill, actor-director Deven Bhojani became the centre of attention for memers across the country. His character Dushyant from Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai , who was a technology lover, and his catchphrase ‘I’ll explain’, became the subject of memes and even he enjoyed them thoroughly. “I feel really good about it, as an actor and a director as well because all my characters have become so popular, including Dushyant,” he says.
Bhojani asserts that many people still don’t know that he directed the sitcom as well, apart from featuring in it. “I want the audience to know that the show that they love so much, I have not only acted in it, but created it too,” he says, adding that this isn’t the first time that he has seen Dushyant memes taking over the internet. “After Oppenheimer (2023), people had made memes saying, ‘Only Dushyant can interpret the film Nolan conceived it to be’.
Also, after the budget announcement, ‘Only Dushyant can explain Nirmala Sitharamam’s budget to public’ memes surfaced,” he shares. With the show now being back in news, does he feel a third season for Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai should be made? “After the first season, people had been asking for season 2, and me, along with producers JD Majethia and Aatish Kapadia, were contemplating whether we should go for it. When we eventually did a second season, we did it successfully, only to some extent and not fully.
So, we thought that the bar that we have set for us, it becomes difficult to reach that high again. We have mutually decided that only when we come with an idea which we are 110 percent sure will be loved by the audience, will we go for it,” he responds. Bhojani admits that the level of sitcoms has degraded over the years and he explains why.
“Those were the times when we had episodes once or twice a week. So, we had enough time to put in efforts as creators and give time to actors for workshops and rehearsals. We had that kind of luxury.
But in today’s time, we have daily comedies and it’s a challenge as there is no time to prepare, as there is a deadline. Thus, quality is also suffering,” he elaborates, adding that the art of family comedies has got lost in recent times. “There are successful weekly comedies, but they deal with a different kind of humour and have a different set of audience.
But if you see the comedies of the 90s and early 2000s, there is no comparison,” he insists. While Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai wasn’t a success at the time of its release, Bhojani reveals that it wasn’t the channel that shut the show down. “The channel’s creative team was still happy with our show despite low TRPs, but we decided on our own that we were starting to get repetitive and before it happens more, we should stop it.
So, it was us who approached the channel to take a break. The show was way ahead of its time and around the 17th run of the show, which was five years later, is when people started to take note of it,” he shares, adding that while he loves both acting and direction, he is focused more on the former now. “Direction has taken a backseat for now, unless I get a great script,” he says.
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