As Netflix’s Scoop garners praise, streamer’s VP answers if it hurt when they missed getting Hansal Mehta’s Scam on their platform: ‘It would have…’

There were reports that before the Pratik Gandhi-led series found its way to SonyLIV and emerged as one of the biggest OTT success stories of recent times, it also did the rounds of Netflix India for streaming. Things, however, didn’t materialise.

In an interview with indianexpress.com, Monika Shergill, Vice President, Content, said the streamer would have loved to have Scam on their platform as it would have found a “natural home”, but every show has its own destiny.

When asked if it hurt when Scam missed the Netflix radar, Shergill said, “I mean, would we have wanted it to be on Netflix? Absolutely yes. It’s a great show, it’s a defining show and it would have found a very natural home on Netflix. But I think every project, story has its own destiny. There are so many things that you admire about what’s on other services; other services might be thinking, ‘Oh this title from Netflix could have been on ours.’ It’s meant to be like that, it had to be on SonyLIV.”

The VP added that their collaboration with Mehta with Scoop, the latest series led by Karishma Tanna, was in alignment with the current times and their intent to push the storytelling envelope further. “As Hansal said earlier, it is that moment in time when there is a shift happening, when you are getting an opportunity to tell three-dimensional stories, create that world… It is not linear, flat.

“Most movies in India have been linear, single layered, but what is happening now with the new medium is the ability to expose audience to this new world…  So, Scam was brilliant, and people are absolutely also going to love Scoop.”

Hansal Mehta said if it wasn’t for Scam, “there would not be Scoop”. The filmmaker said every story that one tells, “irrespective of where it goes,” facilitates the next. “That progression, that evolution is important. That stage in the evolution, from Scam to Scoop, has been facilitated and it’s a bigger role… For a storyteller, your previous story plays a catalyst to tell the next story and the next story finds its home,” he added.

Inspired by Jigna Vora’s biographical book Behind The Bars In Byculla: My Days in Prison, Scoop is created by Hansal Mehta and Thappad co-writer Mrunmayee Lagoo. The series sees Karishma as Jagruti Pathak, an ambitious crime journalist, who becomes a murder suspect.