Finally! India’s biggest, most hyped up web series, ‘The Family Man’, drops its second season tonight at 10 pm, on Amazon Prime Video. After the heavy backlash ‘Tandav’ and the second season of ‘Mirzapur’ faced a few months back, this season of ‘The Family Man’ will be under scrutiny, especially as all three TV shows came out on the same streaming platform – Amazon Prime Video. While the OTT platform will be undergoing severe probing, there will also be an actor who everyone will be looking at, in this upcoming season for the spy web series, due to the current on-going controversy from the aforementioned season – Samantha Akkineni.
Samantha Akkineni’s addition to this brilliant Amazon Prime web series, last year, was met with surprise and delight. Samantha is a brilliant actor and she is finally getting her well deserved pan-Indian “popularity” through this web series. But as the trailer of the upcoming season dropped, we were left with more questions about her upcoming role and her future in the Bollywood industry. Here are the main questions that arise after the trailer dropped:-
(i) Samantha will be portraying a rogue Eelam Tamil terrorist in this upcoming season. Will the controversy surrounding her character cloud her work?
(ii) Setting aside all the hype and controversy, is this a solid enough role for an actor of her caliber?
(iii) With this being her first outing on an OTT platform, how likely is this performance going to set the tone for the roles she will be offered on other OTT projects?
(iv)With Manoj Bajpai being the certified star on this spy series, will Samantha be able to hold her own against his performance as well as the rest of the cast?
Let’s go through these questions one by one. For the first one, Samantha’s performance as Raji in this series will be a major deal when it comes to the Eelam Tamil controversy. The controversy, however, will not dominate over her performance – but there will be some people who might “mountains out of mole hills”, which is unavoidable. But she is an actor of excellent pedigree so we believe she can overcome it fairly easily, bar the Sri Lankan issue is not handled sensibly.
As for the second question, as long as Samantha’s character has a story arc, some character development and space for her to add her own nuance to Raji (the character), this role should be solid enough for her. Bollywood is notorious for making South Indian actresses into eye candy and heavily dependent on the male lead, so the portrayal of an antagonist is a big (and an important) step in the right direction.
The third and fourth answers can be clubbed together by saying; again, Samantha Akkineni is a brilliant actress. She has well established career paths set in both the Telugu and Tamil Film Industries and adding Bollywood to her increasing pan-Indian appeal is just the next step in her career trajectory. She has held her own against multiple on-screen legends and should handle Manoj Bajpai, just fine.
The second season of ‘The Family Man’ will premiere on Amazon Prime Video today (3rd June 2021), at 10 p.m. The first season is already streaming on the OTT platform.