There is limited scope for male actors to showcase their talent in Bengali television serials, actor Saswata Chatterjee said in a podcast recently, adding that the trend was causing frustration among young actors.

Responding to questions in the latest episode of Straight Up with Shree podcast, Saswata pointed out the lack of substantial roles for male actors in the industry.

“If a director wants to cast actors for a project, they will easily find female actors. But when it comes to male actors, it’s a struggle,” he said.

The actor, best known for playing a cold-blooded serial killer Bob Biswas in Sujoy Ghosh’s 2012 thriller Kahaani, recalled an anecdote about Arijit Dutta, owner of Priya Cinema, receiving a call from a producer searching for a “handsome young man with a gym-toned body” to cast as the male lead for a television serial — without any emphasis on acting skills.

“This is very unfortunate,” said the 54-year-old actor, who was recently seen as a gangster in Netflix’s Khakee: The Bengal Chapter.

While acknowledging that television serials have become a quick source of income, Saswata emphasised that this model is not sustainable in the long run. “Actors landing these roles are being used for just one project. They are not repeated,” he explained.

The repercussions of this approach, he noted, are leading to growing discontent among young actors. “Someone I know once told me that the primary topic of discussion inside the make-up rooms of these serials is which therapist one is seeing,” he revealed.

Reflecting on his own journey, Saswata described working on Sandip Ray’s Feluda series for Doordarshan as the “best phase” of his acting career. Saswata also reminisced that working on television series back in the 1990s and 2000s fostered a feeling of belonging to the same family among the cast and crew.