Jay Zaveri: The audience has become smart, only accept creative and good content

MUMBAI: Actor Jay Zaveri, who plays the role of Rudra Raisinghania in Yash and Mamta Patnaik’s show Ishq Mein Marjawan- 2, is thrilled that the show has completed over 150 episodes. The actor says that today’s audience is only satisfied with high-quality content and this is a testimony to the fact that their show is doing well. “Nowadays, the audience has become very smart and keeping them hooked to the show needs some very high level of creativity and good content. Kudos to our creative team and our writers for being able to match up to the audience's expectation. Thriller is a very difficult genre to work with and if you over-do it, the concept in itself fails. Due to the onset of the web, Indian TV faces a huge challenge of keeping their content exciting and entertaining at the same time. Our producers have yet again proved with this season that they have got the hang of this genre and know what works with the audience,” he says.

Talking about his character in the show, Jay says, “I am playing the role of Rudra Raisinghania or Dapper Chachu as everyone from the cast calls me. Rudra is a very calm and composed person and believes in letting his work speak for himself, rather than justifying things. I believe there are many layers to this character which are still to be explored. Till now, only his good side has been shown to the audience but very soon he is going to show his true colours to the family and his real motives will be revealed.”

The first installment of the show did really well and Jay says that this has put pressure on the cast of this season too. “Being a sequel, there is always the pressure of possible comparisons and the question of acceptance from the audience. But I think that fact that we have completed 150 episodes proves that we, as a team, have made our mark with the audience,” he says.

The show went on air after the first phase of lockdown and the team was confident that the audience would love it. “In the beginning, we were all worried about the show as initially it was supposed to be launched in March, just before the lockdown. But the launch got delayed thankfully and we launched during the unlockdown. At that time, no other show had such a huge and massive setup which we had in the initial episodes. I mean the first 10 episodes are like a masala movie which has beautiful outdoors, action sequences, comedy, dance, in a complete package. We shot in Goa and on the Jalesh Cruise, and this was the first time that an Indian show was shot there. So, we were sure that the launch is going to be explosive. We got an amazing response from the audience and few of our cast were overnight hits with them too,” he says.

Ask him how it feels to be shooting in a pandemic, and he says, “When we started shooting again, after the lockdown, everyone was scared as to how things were going to work out, with all the safety regulations. But I guess, everyone was very eager to start working and as the days passed by, we all got adjusted to the new normal of doing our makeup on own, making our own hair, reading the scripts from our phones, managing the costumes on our own with minimal help from the costume team. In fact, the entire team was very supportive and the production took care of all the safety requirements, be it sanitation to wearing masks to not allowing many people on the sets.”

Jay loves working with Mamta and Yash Patnaik as well. “This is the first time that I am working with Mamta ma’am and Yash sir and the experience is just superb. They are very cordial and helpful people. They make sure none of us, from the cast and crew, have any issues during these hard times and make sure things are smooth for everyone,” he says.