Exclusive: Jaaved Jaaferi on the Bollywood vs South debate, says 'there's no South and North, we're all Indians'

Jaaved Jaaferi’s performance on the Disney + Hotstar show Escaype Live has been receiving a lot of praise from the masses. In a recent interview with Desimartini, the actor had spoken about the row between the Hindi films and the South film industry which increased after some South movies emerged successful at the box office over the Hindi films. Jaaved was quick to diss the entire debate altogether.

The actor said, “What is there to debate? Make good films, it will work. There's no South and North, we're all Indians. It’s the same as a Hindi film doing well in the South so a South movie does well in the North. It's all about the same country, like if a film from one region reaches out across languages, the language of the cinema remains the same because a story is a story. But for example, if I'm watching RRR , I'll obviously watch it in Hindi, right? Similarly, if I've to watch Life Is Beautiful (1997) which is an Italian film, I'll watch it in English. That film won an Academy and accolades all over the world despite being an Italian movie. So you cannot call anything a 'pan-world' film, like Slumdog Millionaire (2008) too was an Indian story but the whole world accepted it. So I don't see the argument behind it, you want to make a film which reaches out to the world so obviously there'll be a certain language that the world will understand. There are people who'll only understand the movie in Hindi including the song and dance sequences. Now RRR was loved by many people in the West I heard and found it a great experience. So I just feel cinema is cinema. There is good cinema and then there's bad cinema. There's nothing as a language barrier. Squid Games despite being a Korean show was watched by everyone across the world. There are different people like the Blacks, Whites, and Orientals but everybody watched shows like Squid Game , Game Of Thrones , and Money Heist. There was no barrier of a language and everyone loved these shows so I think we're past that. Whether it’s Hindi or in South, people don't care, they just want to watch good films and enjoy it."

In the same interaction, Jaaved Jaaferi also revealed to us that he will be happy to join the speculated reboot of his hit show Takeshi’s Castle. However, the actor said that he has not been approached for the same. Talking about Escaype Live, the show has been helmed by Sidharth Kumar Tewary.