‘The show must go on!’ This adage is coming out to be perfectly true these days, especially in case of the television industry. With the actors leaving the serials because of film offers, hectic work schedules, monotonous story or generation leaps; replacement is quickly becoming the keyword for the production houses. The lead characters in the popular shows are not longer indispensable. The slightest tiff or problem and the production house readily alters the script and brings in a new face.
How does it do that? Simple! Suddenly, the character meets with an accident (falls from the cliff, gets burnt in a car accident, ends up in the middle of a house fire, etc) and ends up having his/her face distorted. Fast forward a few days and a few operations and voila! You have a new face to play the same character. So many actors, like Rajeev Khandelwal, Smriti Iraani, Cezanne Khan, Iqbal Khan Surveen Chawla, Apoorva Agnihotri, Rucha Gujarati and the like, have been replaced in the shows where they played the main lead.
Now the question is what about the audience? Does it accept the new face? Does it find easy to see Hitchen Tejwani as ‘Anurag’, Gautami Kapoor as ‘Tulsi’ and Shilpa Shinde as ‘Soni’. There is much controversy over this issue. Some agree that once the main lead changes; the serial loses its original appeal. However, there are others who feel that if the new actor is popular enough, he can carry off the serial. With Prachi Desai, the youngest ‘bahu’ on television, all set to quit ‘Kasamh Se’ hindi serial in May, let’s see which opinion comes true!
