Pranay Pachauri: Pranay’s latest series, Crash Course, starred him as Ashutosh Kumar, a Physics teacher who is also the crush of several students due to his attractive appearance. The series, which also stars Annu Kapoor, premiered on Prime Video on August 5 and followed eight engineering students in Kota. Pranay, who drew inspiration for Ashutosh from professors and teachers in his personal life, said the series reminded him of his own time in coaching centres while studying to become a CA.
Actor Annu Kapoor plays a ruthless businessman who runs an institute and wants his students to excel in entrance exams so he can gain complete control of the education industry in Kota. In a recent interview with the Hindustan Times, Pranay stated that there is something wrong with the education system in India and more series like Crash Course are needed to highlight it.
Pranay recalled the time he was preparing to become a CA before he got an offer to star in his debut film Time Out (2015), saying, “I was preparing for CA, because I come from a corporate background and both my parents were in the corporate field. So obviously their life view is very different. CA was a very difficult subject because its entrance exams do not have a structured set”.
He added “When I was reading the script, it did remind me of the days when I used to study for CA and I used to have immense pressure on me. When you are forced to do things while you are studying and they take the fun out of it, it gets very dark and hard. Especially when you are a young kid, you do not even make sense of the world. I used to feel very pressurised. I did not know what to do and I would feel lost as a kid”.
Reagarding coaching centers, he added, “200 to 300 students were rushed in a class which has the capacity of 50 people. It used to be a very competitive environment and toxic at the same time. I used to feel I don’t know what I am doing in life. And when I chose the script (Crash Course), I was like I am glad that Amazon is investing in a script like this because such stories need to be told. There was Taare Zameen Par, then 3 Idiots, but it’s important that such stories are repeated every few years so that audience normalises and understands that there is something wrong with our education system and that’s not how we should deal with it”.
Crash Course written by Manish Hariprasad and Raina Roy, is directed by Vijay Mourya in his directorial debut. Pranay also spoke about working on the show with Annu Kapoor, despite the fact that they have never been seen together. He said, “I don’t have any scene with him even though he is trying to poach me (in the plot). I met him off-set, and it was great. I have been watching him since my childhood, so it was just surreal to be in a series with him, to see him perform, and to talk to him. I am just very grateful that I got to work with such experienced people”.
The actor also responded to the constant comparisons of Crash Course to Kota Factory, which also follwed the boldly competitive lives of student in Kota, and called it ‘unfair’. “The comparisons are a little unfair. Kota Factory deals with a similar subject but has a very different approach to it. We in Crash Course are showing a much more layered version of Kota where teachers, professors, and the owners of the institutes are involved. It’s basically how coaching has become a business, how pressurising students have become a business. We are delving into that more and into the lives of these eight kids who have their own journeys after joining Kota. There shouldn’t be any comparisons at all because these are very different shows, even though we are touching upon a similar topic. People start forming these opinions even before watching it, that’s unfair” Pranay said.
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Pranay is also known for his roles in the web series Alisha (2015) with Lianne Texeira and in Season 2 of The Trip (2018) with Amyra Dastur, both of which were streamed on YouTube. Alisha was released long before Netflix arrived in India in 2016, and OTT became extremely popular during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The actor described the OTT platform as a blessing for those in the entertainment field.
Pranay’s next appearance will be in Disney+Hotstar’s revenge-based thriller Karamyuddh, alongside Paoli Dam and Ashutosh Rana. He is also working on an independent festival film with Vipul Amrutlal Shah and a project with Excel Entertainment.
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