Season 1 of Little Things, a slice-of-life Dice Media web series about the everyday lives of a couple (played by Mithila Palkar and Dhruv Sehgal) premiered in 2016. Two years later, the popular show's second season is set to premiere on Netflix, reaching 130 million members in more than 190 countries. Actors Mithila and Dhruv spoke about how their onscreen chemistry gradually evolved and how 'acting' is still synonymous with 'Bollywood' for their relatives:
ON THEIR CHEMISTRY
Mithila Palkar: Honestly, even we haven't figured it out.
Dhruv Sehgal: It's good that we haven't. We've never spoken about it and I think we don't also.
MP: Yeah I don't think we talk about it. To be very honest with you, Dhruv and I have become better friends over the second season. We never really sat down off-camera and had conversations, which we did before this season. So I think we've become better friends only over the past few months. The first time we worked together in a video was on Filter Copy's video called Confusing Things Girlfriends Say and Dhruv was not meant to be in that video. They were auditioning people to cast opposite me and Dhruv had co-written the sketch with Karthik Krishnan and they said, "Okay fine, we don't have anyone, just do it."
DS: You can't plan this. Of course, we've never done that. Our intention was never that great chemistry wala show likhte hain. We were just trying to write stuff that people would relate to and have a resonance with. And it so happened that it took this form. The form was never thought of.
WHAT MAKES THE DAILY LIVES OF AN URBAN COUPLE INTERESTING
DS: It's because of the books that I've read, certain films that I saw, which made me think that this quality was really nice, this resonates with me, I really like it. If you read (Anton) Chekov or if you watch the films of Alexander Payne, or if you watch Sideways (2004), it's just two guys on a road trip and suddenly you're like, "This is so beautiful." There's infinite infinity and that's what we were trying to do. It happened organically. And somewhere you also want to give people things that they don't necessarily get very often. So if Bollywood gives them that, the web could give them this.
ON WHETHER YOU HAVEN'T 'MADE IT' TILL YOU CRACK 'BOLLYWOOD'
DS: My dadi says, "Kidhar hai? Kabhi dekha hi nahi tujhe?"
MP: Exactly. I live with my nana-nani. My parents still have more access to the internet than my grandparents would ever have had, had I not been working on the internet, honestly. Because why would they go on Facebook ever, right? Or YouTube. So when the cup song went viral, I told my grandfather about it and he said, "Haan okay." He didn't really understand it so I didn't push it. I let it be. Then some relative called him and said, "Mithila's video came on TV." Some news channel covered it. And then he came up to me and said, "Oh now you'll reach out to more people because you're on TV." So unless you're on one of those conventional mediums that they know of, it's not real. But now I think things are changing…but the generic belief is that if you're an actor, it means Bollywood.
DOES DHRUV HAS BOLLYWOOD PLANS
DS: No. It's good if it happens, but I'm always looking for thing that I find interesting. So when we started working for Dice and Filter Copy, for me, that was interesting. But I would much rather do a very interesting podcast than a boring film. So I'm okay like that. I consider myself to be form-friendly like that. I'm very happy doing a children's book for five years, if that is the best children's book in the world. as compared to doing three web series and two whatever films. I'm a story buff, so it could be any kind of story. It could be from whatever form.