Punjabi star Parmish Verma talks about sharing the screen with his father in ‘Main Te Bapu’

Mumbai : Punjabi actor-singer Parmish Verma is currently gearing up for his upcoming film, ‘Main Te Bapu which will debut in theatres on Friday. Interestingly, the film also stars his father Satish Verma, who is a theatre artist and writer. Recently, the song, Pehli Mulaqat’ from the film was also released to the delight of the music lovers under Bollywood producer-actor Jackky Bhagnani’s music label Jjust Music. In a conversation with IANS, Parmish spoke about working on the film with his father, the challenges that came with shooting in a restricted environment and the dynamics of the Punjabi film and music industry. Talking about how the project landed on his plate, Parmish says, “My entire crew including my producers were planning on a movie which was completely different but due to the rising Covid cases at that time the restrictions increased and we were not able to make the movie that we planned. However, while we were working on that movie and it got pushed, the writer of Main Te Bapu’ narrated the story to me, that was the moment where the entire team sat down and it finally materialised.”

The film wasn’t a smooth sail for him though as the entire crew was facing Covid restrictions. “My biggest challenge in this film was exposing my father to the restrictions that we had during the film. As my father is around 65 years old and I was a bit sceptical of having him on the sets but my dad was super pumped and full of enthusiasm. However I think due to us having a small crew where everyone trusted each other, it helped us a lot to cheer ourselves up.” For him, working with his father in this film was a matter of natural performance as he was pretty much playing himself during the making of this film, “The best benefit that I could have had is that my actual father is playing my on-screen father in this film and I was pretty much playing myself. Although scenarios were different, the story is essentially about a son manipulating his father into doing something that he would otherwise not do.

“He adds, “That is pretty much me as I have done this very frequently like doing different dramas, crying and all the other stuff.” Laying down his thoughts on the Punjabi film and music industries emerging as a major competition to the mainstream Bollywood, he shares, “The Punjabi music and film industries create new content which the people get constantly attached with. Therefore, whatever happens here gets picked up very soon as everybody is so invested in it.” He mentions, “I think the Punjabi industry is self-sufficient and is definitely a major competitor to the contemporary cinema industry because even Bollywood movies need Punjabi songs and a piece of that buzz, high energy.” “I would not call it a threat as it is more of a business where Punjabi music is sort of correlated with Bollywood and it works both ways as Bollywood also helps Punjabi music grow”, Parmish concludes. Main Te Bapu’ starring Parmish Verma and Satish Verma will debut in theatres on April 22.