Bigg Boss Kannada Season 7 winner Shine Shetty has an OTT release this week. His first-ever web series, Ekam, is releasing on July 13. “When an offer to be a part of Ekam came, the first thing that excited me was that there was a Paramvah Studios (Rakshit Shetty’s banner) connect. Back then, I had not worked with the banner, so I was keen to collaborate. Initially, I was called to audition for one of the 7 stories in the series, which is not the one I worked on eventually, Flight. After seeing me, the team of Journeyman Productions thought I was more apt to play a lover boy in Flight. It was fun working on this story, as the team was largely composed of alumni from the LV Prasad film institute and mentors who worked there,” says Shine.

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Flight is a love story set in the 90s, which focuses on the subject of freedom that women had, or rather didn’t have, back then. “The story is set in an era in which women were taking baby steps to assert themselves and face the world, while also coming to terms with their changing perspectives and ideologies. For instance, when a girl gets married, there is no question about what next; she’d have to move to wherever her husband is from. That is still more or less the norm, although, today, women have more choices. When a girl from that era questions this and more is what has been explored in this story. I play her love interest, Thomas, guitar-playing outsider, in Flight,” explains Shine, adding that divulging anything further will give away the entire plot.

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What went wrong after BBK7?

Ekam is Shine’s first release since Bachelor Party, which came out earlier this year. This was also a Paramvah Studios production, in which he had a cameo – it’s Shine’s Bachelor Party that becomes the catalyst for the events of the comedy film. Prior to this, the Bigg Boss Kannada winner had a cameo in Kantara in September 2022 and another in Vijayanand. For someone who won the popular Kannada reality show not long ago, Shine’s filmography does come across a tad sporadic.

“I won Bigg Boss Kannada Season 7 in February 2020. There were multiple film offers that came my at the time. In fact, I was supposed to shoot for my acting debut, the story of which I had written, and which Rishab Shetty Films was to produce. I’d also been picked to play the main antagonist in Rudraprayag, a film that Rishab had announced as a directorial before Kantara, but didn’t take off for various reasons. I didn’t take up any other project then, because I was set to work on two projects with Rishab Shetty Films. That was a big deal for me and I didn’t want to have too much on my plate at a time. I wanted to dedicate myself to a project completely and then move on. Unfortunately, the pandemic struck a little more than a month later and all our plans went haywire,” Shine tells us.

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In the post-pandemic phase, the first film that came to Shine with an offer for a character role was James. He did not want to let go of it as it was an opportunity to collaborate with Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar. “I had decided back then to not take up roles if I don’t have much to do, but since it was Puneeth sir’s film I did it. I followed this up with a minor role in the Vijay Sankeshwar biopic Vijayanand. This was a time when I wasn’t getting any exciting work. Story narrations were happening often, but more often than not, there wouldn’t be a producer on board and the question then would be if I knew someone who’d be willing to back it,” he says adding, “They all wanted to know if collaborating with me would mean that Rishab would support the project in some way.”

Turns out, a majority of the filmmakers knocking on Shine’s door were more interested in finding out what good such a collaboration would do for them than the actor. “These were not films that they pitched as best fits for me,” he adds.

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