Suggested Topics :
Nakuul Mehta on 'Space Gen: Chandrayaan', Why OTT Is ‘More Democratic’ and Creating a Podcast With Wife Jankee
Nakuul Mehta reflects on his 18-year career and tells us what's coming next.
Following the release of his TVF drama series Space Gen: Chandrayaan, Nakuul Mehta sat down with The Hollywood Reporter, India, reflecting on an 18-year career in acting, spanning every medium possible, whether it’s the big screen, television, theatre, or streaming. “I still look at myself as an outsider,” he says. “It’s why I continue to ask myself, how else can I get creative, how else can I tap into different parts of myself?”
Mehta’s trajectory hasn't followed the standard industry playbook. After an initial foray into film with the 2008 romance Haal-e-Dil, he pivoted toward television, where he became a household name. Characters like Aditya Kumar in Pyaar Ka Dard Hai Meetha Meetha Pyaara Pyaara, and Shivaay Singh Oberoi in Ishqbaaaz gave him a global reach, he says.
“Between every television show, I've taken some time off to go back and live life, because when you're doing TV, there is no bandwidth,” he says, determined to make an active effort to step away from his acting bubble. “It is in the living of life that you discover different facets of who you are, different stories, different mediums,” he adds.
The actor has never shied away from breaking into the unknown. For Mehta, OTT platforms today represent a "beautiful middle ground" between the high-volume nature of television and the exclusivity of commercial Bollywood. “Commercial Bollywood cinema and television to me are pretty much the same: they cater to a larger audience and aren't necessarily very nuanced,” he observes. “Streaming gives you that opportunity to push the envelope. It is far more democratic to work with different platforms simultaneously than it ever has been.”
His latest streaming project, Space Gen: Chandrayaan (2026), represents a pivot from his previous work. While the series explores a major national milestone, Mehta was more interested in the quiet reality of the people behind it. “It was a departure in many ways,” he says. “Space Gen was based on an event which the country knows about and the world knows about, but I don't think we knew about the people behind it.”
Off-camera, Mehta’s focus has shifted toward a more personal project: The Indian Parent Pod. Created with his wife, Jankee, the podcast is an extension of their lives, focusing on the emotional labour of parenting rather than the "strategies and fear-mongering" common on the internet.
Mehta continues to foster dialogue around the "working father" narrative in India. “It's a conversation at a very nascent stage here,” he points out. “Even being a working mother is something we are just now beginning to honour,” he says. He challenges the common language used by men, specifically the idea of "helping" at home. To Mehta, that word alone diminishes a father’s true role. “I think it’s incumbent on the men and fathers to actively do that work, too.”
He admits that navigating parenthood publicly—sharing both the successes and the "failures"—took time to accept. “Initially, I worried: would that take away from how people perceive you as an actor?” he reflects. “It took self-acceptance to realise these things don’t take away from who you are; they only add to it.”
Whether it’s on-screen or off-screen, Mehta says, “The journey has been led by curiosity.” Right now, he says, he is working on a children’s book, slated for release by the end of 2026.