Scam 2003: The Telgi Story actor Gagan Dev Riar, who started his acting journey with theatre, is still passionate about it. Gagan, who acted in a solo-act play titled Sarenta last year, says, “The joy of being in the moment comes from theatre.” He also adds that he’s happy to be called a theatre actor.

Gagan, who has featured in films like Abhishek Chaubey’s Sonchiriya and Mira Nair’s web series A Suitable Boy, shares how he loves the challenge theatre gives him more than any other medium. He says, “It is a task to perform for one-and-half hours to two hours on stage without any distraction. You get an instant reaction during your performance on stage, while in cinema, you don’t get an idea till the scene is edited or you sit down to dub for it. The joy of being in the moment comes from theatre.”

However, the actor admits that theatre is not taken seriously by many actors. He says, “Theatre is not a stepping stone to films or anything else. Theatre is riyaaz for an actor and it hones their skills, so I don’t understand how actors make working in theatre a fill-in-the-gap arrangement.

Gagan, who won accolades for Hansal Mehta’s Scam 2003: The Telgi Story, admits he has been offered similar roles post that. “After Scam, I was being offered similar 50-year-old villainous guy or mob-don roles, and I rejected them all. Before it, the struggle was that casting guys would just send me scripts that they could not explain themselves, and I had to reject them. Now, things have changed and supporting actors are getting good work. Having said that, I don’t feel that star power will ever diminish. People want to go to the theatre and watch stars and entertaining films,” he says.

As a director, Tushar Hiranandani has offered us two diverse projects, Saand Ki Aankh (2019) and Scam 2003: The Telgi Story. But the two were bound by a common thread— each offering was praised for its lead actor’s performance. The audience expects similar magic with his next, Sri, which sees Rajkummar Rao play the visually-impaired industrialist, Srikanth Bolla. Hiranandani, who is handling the biopic’s post-production currently, is confident that people will be blown away by the leading man’s performance. 

“In Sri, I cast Rajkummar with Jyothika, who is acting in Hindi films after 15-16 years. I am sure when the trailer comes out, people will be talking about Raj. He is a fantastic actor anyway,” says the director. The movie, slated for an early 2024 release, also features Alaya F.

So, what makes his actors come alive under his direction? Probably the fact that Hiranandani feels protective and affectionate, almost like a mother, towards them.

“I think like a mother now. In my first film, I was criticized for the casting, but when Bhumi [Pednekar] and Taapsee [Pannu] won awards, I was the happiest. Now when Gagan is being praised, it’s the same feeling. Nothing makes me happier than my actors being praised.”

The day Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020) dropped online, Tushar Hiranandani watched it in one go. He was so taken by the series that he called  creator-director Hansal Mehta at 5.30 am to congratulate him. Three years later, as Scam 2003: The Telgi Story premièred earlier this month, the roles were reversed.

Hiranandani recalls, “I had switched off my phone because I was scared [of the reactions]. The moment I switched it on, the first call was from Hansal sir. He said, ‘Are you mad? Don’t switch off your phone. Buy five more phones now. The reviews are fantastic.’”

Scam 2003, based on the stamp paper fraud by Abdul Karim Telgi and fronted by Gagan Dev Riar, has Mehta as the creator-showrunner while Hiranandani serves as the director. Was he apprehensive about stepping into the Scam universe, considering the 2020 offering was a runaway hit?

“How could I be scared? It couldn’t get worse than sitting at home. I knew what I was getting into, but I never took the pressure of it. After going through two years of COVID-19, the excitement to do any kind of work was enough for me,” he says.

The director is grateful to Mehta not only for trusting him with the show, but also for giving him a free hand. “Hansal sir is the baap of OTT. He has reached this position because he is so giving. He told me to make Scam colourful and commercial. He gave me absolute freedom to bring my take to the script. [For a sequence set in a dance bar], he said, ‘I don’t know the world of dance bars. I haven’t even been there.’ So, I assured him that I’d shoot in such a manner that he would enjoy watching it.”

Undoubtedly, the series’ biggest victory is its leading man. So compelling has been Riar’s performance that it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else as Telgi on screen. And yet, Hiranandani admits that he was initially concerned whether Riar was the best choice for the role.

“Initially, Hansal sir didn’t let me meet him. Then one day, he called us over for dinner. Gagan was supposed to be there too, and I was told he was putting on weight for a year. When I saw him, I couldn’t hide my disappointment. I said, ‘He doesn’t look like Telgi.’ I believed he was talented because Hansal sir chose him, but he didn’t look the part. I took Gagan to a fitness trainer, who made him put on 15 to 16 kilos more.”

The director says the biggest validation came soon after, as even the team working on the show couldn’t recognize Riar. “When the marketing team of Applause Entertainment was given the first look to be put out on social media, they asked, ‘How can we put Telgi’s picture? Where is Gagan’s picture?’”

It's 2021. The hindi film industry, like the rest of the country, is staring at uncertainty due to COVID-19. At home, actor Gagan Dev Riar wonders how he will pay next month’s rent. A call interrupts his thoughts and changes his life. “It was a casting call. I was told they wanted to test me for the lead part of Mr Abdul Karim Tegli’s role,” he recalls.

It’s 2023, two years later, and Riar’s phone hasn’t stop ringing with calls from all around the country to congratulate him for his portrayal of Telgi in Hansal Mehta’s Scam 2003. “A couple of days ago, at 4 am, some people called me. I don’t know their names. They, I think, were a little drunk and they wanted to organize a party for me somewhere. They said, ‘We will put up your hoardings and we will do parties, sir.’ I was laughing sitting in my room,” Riar chuckles.

But he remembers his first audition for the show being less than perfect. “I was not very excited about it because those were little depressing times for all of us courtesy COVID. So, I just prepared a little bit and I went for the audition. They didn’t enjoy it. ‘We have seen you perform on stage, do something like that, magical,’ I was told. I realized I was taking it a little lightly. I should not have. I wasn’t doing my job properly,” he says.

His theatre career has been prolific: He is notably known for his portrayal of Sir Toby Belch, which won him the META award for best supporting actor 2014 for Piya Behroopiya (A Hindi adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night).

The feedback altered something within him, and he invested a couple of days into preparing his own script for the next audition. And magic happened. “Hansal sir got on a call with me after the new audition. He said, ‘Gagan, it was a beautiful audition and from my side, you are confirmed. Just give me a week’s time. I’ll just convince Sony people and Applause Entertainment because they also have to make decisions’. Within one week he called me again and said, ‘We are on. Just start putting on weight now.’ It was all of very filmy,” he smiles.

The moment of filmy fantasy didn’t last too long as Riar dived into the process of physically transforming into Telgi that turned out more daunting than he expected. Gagan candidly shares that the weight gain journey almost caused him body image issues.

“I did have my weaker moments when I was gaining the weight. I wasn’t able to look at myself in the mirror because I never knew that I could look like this. I told my nutritionist I was getting depressed because I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. He said, ‘Put curtain on your mirrors till the time you finish the shoot to avoid it,’” Riar shares. 

When the shoot finally began April last year, the actor found his concerns vanishing in no time. “My acting has always helped me gain that confidence back. A compliment on a good shot boosts your ego. Then you take that one little ounce of confidence and take another step, and then you take one day at a time. That’s how I completed this journey,” he says.

The emotional ride that he took to bring the man, who committed one of the biggest financial frauds in the country to life, was far more enjoyable for Riar, though. Even though the series is based on the book Telgi: Ek Reporter ki Diary, the actor considered the script his Bible and showrunner Mehta, his guide.

“Flawed is the word to use for Telgi. Many people use the word criminal and scamster. Yes, there was a scam and yes it was a crime, but I would love to go with the word flawed. Hansal sir actually gave me this idea that I should not think of him as a villain. If I do that, I’ll not be able to play it with the honesty and humanity because at the end of the day, we all are humans and we all are flawed,” he says.

He also added, “Every character has a vulnerability. Telgi also had his weak as well as strong moments. He loved and he hated, everything that a human being does in his or her life. That’s how I wanted to go about it,” he explains.

For now, he is the actor of the moment. When he met Pratik Gandhi recently, the actor who played Harshad Mehta in Scam 1992, Gandhi had some life advice to impart. “At the Scam party, we clicked many photographs together and I said to him, ‘I haven’t done this ever before. How long will the photo session go for?’ He replied, ‘Get used to it now,’” the actor says.

It was obvious to presume that after the astonishing success of Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story, the filmmaker would also direct Scam 2003: The Telgi Story, but Hansal Mehta handed the baton over to Tushar Hiranandani. Was it trust or a need to change the vision? “The show needed a fresh pair of eyes. Scam remains my baby, but now it also has a new parent,” begins Mehta, who serves as the showrunner of Sony LIV’s latest offering that is based on Sanjay Singh’s Telgi Scam: Reporter ki Diary.

Even though the second part of the season is yet to air, Mehta is thrilled that his decision to rope in Hiranandani paid off. “Tushar brings in an element of entertainment because of his experience in commercial cinema. I wanted that in Scam 2003, because Telgi is a different beast from Harshad Mehta,” says the showrunner, adding that following this experience, he is keen to build more collaborations with other directors on shows while he takes on the larger role of a showrunner.

“I enjoy mentoring the format and guiding the process. Scam has given us so much love and changed so many lives; [it is] a responsibility to keep that spirit alive.”

Another crucial task at hand for Mehta and his team was to find their Telgi. Courtesy the benchmark set by Pratik Gandhi in Scam 1992. People wanted to see if the makers could recreate the magic with Scam 2003. While the show has received mixed reviews, the casting of Gagan Dev Riar as Abdul Karim Telgi has passed with flying colours. But the filmmaker asserts that any comparison between Gandhi and Riar would be unfair.

“I feel blessed that I am able to give a platform to actors like Gagan because he is such a phenomenal talent. It was a difficult part to play. There’s no scope to look conventionally attractive with a pot belly and awkward [body language that shows him] constantly pulling his pants up. He is not suave or well-dressed. Yet, he has a riveting presence. Gagan is too seasoned an actor to take the pressure of comparisons with Pratik. Not only are their characters different, but even their approach is different,” expresses Mehta, who believes that the only commonality between the two is their acting prowess.

The creator-director also reveals that the journey of Scam is far from over. “We are now discussing ideas for the third season. It will be nice to return to the chair [of the director] for the third season,” he smiles.

Tushar Hiranandani and Hansal Mehta