Ishaan Khatter champions empowerment of Bollywood writer community

Mumbai, May 31 (IANS) Bollywood actor Ishaan Khatter, who can be seen in the streaming series ‘The Royals’, is rallying behind the skeleton of the film industry, the writer community which crafts stories to be told on celluloid.

With Bollywood films not clicking at the box-office, the screenwriter community is bearing the brunt of the lull.

Recently, the actor spoke with IANS, and concurred that Bollywood urgently needs to undergo cost reconstruction, and ensure that the writers are paid well.

Ishaan told IANS, “The conversation is what drives change. And as actors, we literally owe what we do to writers. So let's start with acknowledging and crediting. Let's start with that. You have to start somewhere. So let's start with bringing back empowerment to writers, without whom none of the actors would have a job”.

He further pointed out how once veteran screenwriter duo Salim-Javed commanded massive power.

“There were men like Salim-Javed back in the day, who used to write their own names on the posters to remind people that, look, this is where it all started. So, I mean, we should celebrate it. It's not like something that comes with pressure. We should celebrate our writers. The more love you give to them, you'll get that love back in stories. And that's what we need right now. We need writers”, he added.

Earlier, Ishaan had shared a behind-the-scenes moment with Nora Fatehi from the sets of ‘The Royals’, and revealed the name under which the actress saved her number on his phone. Ishaan took to Instagram stories, where he shared a picture of the two covered with towels.

Ishaan wrote, “Also how could I forget to add Nora Fatehi to the BTS dump, or shall I say ‘Nora Da… queen’ as you have saved ur contact urself (sic). We had a blast and get to dance too little”.

Tagging it as her favourite picture, Nora re-posted the photograph and wrote, “OMG this pic, my favourite! And yes that’s my name”.

Nora then posted a picture of herself dressed in a saree holding the clapboard of the series. ‘The Royals’ also stars Bhumi Pednekar, Sakshi Tanwar, Dino Morea, Milind Soman, Chunky Panday, Vihaan Samat, Kavya Trehan, Sumukhi Suresh, Udit Arora, and Luke Kenny.

The show streams on Netflix.

--IANS

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