Scoop won two awards at the Busan Film Festival, including the Best Leading Actress for Karishma Tanna.
Netflix’s show Scoop has earned a double win at the Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards, organised as part of the prestigious Busan Film Festival. The Hansal Mehta show won in the Best Asian Series and Best Lead Actress categories, with the protagonist Karishma Tanna taking home the award for the latter. After receiving the awards and returning to India, Karishma spoke to DNA about the win and how she can’t stop pinching herself.
An ecstatic Karishma says that being awarded by a film festival from outside India is great validation. “It gives me an immense high. It’s screaming out loud validation that I am not just appreciated in India but also in other countries. When I got to know that our show Scoop was nominated in two categories, I was overwhelmed. There only, I thought I had won because being nominated in the Busan Film Festival is a big deal. I won there only. I was very grateful and overwhelmed just being a part of it,” she says.
Karishma tells us that her intuition told her that they would win in at least one of the two categories they were nominated in. “I believe in the show, the entire setup, and my acting,” she said. But when the award did come for the Best Asian Series, it was an anti-climax. “They first announced it in Korean and I didn’t understand. Then they translated it in English so I got it the second time around. The girl sitting next to me congratulated me because she understood it the first time, which was pretty funny,” recalls Karishma.
The show’s creator Hansal Mehta could not go to Busan for the ceremony as he was unwell and it was up to Karishma to represent the show. “To see myself up there on the big screen, going up on stage and delivering the acceptance speech was pretty nerve-wrecking. I feel like going back and reliving the moment,” she says. And then, sometime later, Karishma won herself, in the Best Lead Actress category. The actress adds, “I was relaxed with my heart beat was normal. Towards the end, the Best Lead Actress category comes and there I am back on the big screen. Somewhere deep down, I was expecting because you want to win but I wasn’t really in any pressure. But I was open to anyone else winning. Then they announced and I thought, ‘am I dreaming’. It was a different experience altogether.”
And is Karishma still pinching herself about it? She responds in the affirmative, saying, “It’s still not sunk in. Sometimes I think that there are these two prestigious awards lying in my house. Like really?”
When asked how a win like this motivates her for the future, the actress says, “It motivates me and also makes me nervous. Because I know whatever I do next, I have to live the moment and match the expectations and live up to these standards. It does challenge me, which is something I feel good about. But at the same time, it’s a very nervous feeling.”
Scoop released on Netflix in June. Based on Jigna Vora’s book Behind Bars in Byculla, it fictionalises the journalist’s ordeal of being falsely accused of conspiring to murder a fellow journalist and being in league with underworld don Chhota Rajan.
