Mumbai: Nia Sharma, popular for TV shows such as ‘Ek Hazaaron Mein Meri Behna Hai’ and ‘Jamai Raja’, decided to stay away from the small screen as she was ‘sceptical’ about its future at a time when every other show was going off air in a few months.
As someone who has been part of long-running soap operas, including ‘Ishq Mein Marjawan’, the actor said that she wanted to wait for the right opportunity which came in the form of her latest outing ‘Suhagan Chudail’, which airs on ‘Colors TV’.
“It was a conscious decision to not do TV shows as the idea was that TV overall in the last few years has really drained in terms of TRP. Every show was shut down in three to four months. The kind of shows I’ve done had longevity and were running for years and years. I always believed that a project shouldn't be like, ‘It came and it went off the air and no one was aware of it’. I'm sceptical of those kinds of things and that’s why I was consciously not taking up a TV project because everyone was experimenting. Nobody was sure and even the roles that I was offered, I didn’t resonate with them. All the shows that were being offered to me went off the air in three months. So, I was kind of okay, ‘Thankfully, I didn’t take it up’,” Sharma told the top news agency.
The Indian TV space has long been beset by problems such as long working hours, delays in remuneration, harassment and a toxic environment on sets.
According to Sharma, the situation is less likely to improve because the focus of the industry is to churn out content regularly.
“We always know of certain things that television faces - it’s the working conditions, which will always be there because it’s mostly about daily soaps. They’re churning out content on a daily basis. They’re not here to set examples about how a TV show set should be. We all are aware of these conditions,” she added.