Arjun Mathur Is Set To Change The Script For Indian Male Actors

Arjun Mathur, who stars in the year’s most talked about web series, Made in Heaven, is set to change the script for Indian male actors

- Sneha Bhura

Ten years ago, you may not have noticed him in short films by Mira Nair and Farhan Akhtar. It is unlikely that you remember him from Zoya Akhtar’s directorial debut Luck By Chance, in which he plays the hero’s friend. Harder still would be to recall him as Rahul Gandhi in The Accidental Prime Minister. For 12 years, Arjun Mathur, 38, was only visible on the fringes as that layered character, the “social cause” type, the hero’s trusted friend/ neighbour.... He was an outsider in the industry struggling with his drill of rejections and disappointments. And losing leading roles to the progeny of the privileged.

Until Made in Heaven happened. His turn this year as a wedding planner for Delhi’s rich in the Amazon original web series broke the template. Mathur became the poster boy for a kind of complicated but emotionally intelligent male on desi television. In the show, his character Karan Mehra owes a lot of money to his rich businessman father, is constantly heckled by loan sharks, has run a failed company, and is hustling to stay afloat in the cutthroat wedding market, all the while trying to keep his homosexuality a secret.