EXCLUSIVE: Sameer Nair, CEO of Applause Entertainment, talks about the Indian adaptation of The Office- “The idea is to take it to a larger mass audience”

By Athulya Nambiar -

March 28, 2022 - 5:46 PM IST

The first episode of The Office (US version) was aired on March 24, 2005. It has been 17 years since then and almost nine years since the show went off air. The last episode was aired on May 13, 2013. The show takes us through the mundane yet not so mundane life of employees of a small paper company called Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA. It is one of the most popular shows not just in the USA but in several other countries as well. With the ease of access to OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the show only reached a wider audience. Every year there are more and more people becoming fans of The Office and feeling an emotional connection with the characters of the show. From Michael Scott, Dwight Schrute, Jim Halpert, Pam Beesly to Kevin Malone, fans developed an emotional bond with every character. But the US version of The Office is in itself an adaptation of the UK version of The Office which is where the series originated.

EXCLUSIVE: Sameer Nair, CEO of Applause Entertainment, talks about the Indian adaptation of The Office- “The idea is to take it to a larger mass audience”

In 2019, India, too, had its own adaptation of The Office. Sameer Nair, CEO of Applause Entertainment, acquired the rights to the Hindi remake and the first two seasons are currently streaming on Disney+Hotstar. While it has been adapted from The UK version, it happens to be shot-to-shot remake of the much more popular American version. In the Indian office, you will see that Michael Scott is now Jagdeep Chadda, Scranton has been relocated to Faridabad, Pam is Pammi, and the special Halloween episode is a Navratri episode. And Michael’s catchphrase - ‘That’s what she said’ - is now ‘Baby bhi yehi boli’.

While the Indian version has yet not managed to receive a reception half as good as its American counterpart, Bollywood Hungama asked Sameer Nair, CEO of Applause Entertainment, the reason behind adapting a classic show like The Office whose fan following only increases by the day and has made a place in the hearts of its audience. "There are two parts," says Sameer elaborating on the risks and reasons to make an Indian adaptation, "One is of course, that there will be a core audience who would have seen the original, and therefore, you know, they have that extremely strong sort of feelings about things. But when we are making an adaptation, we are not doing it for that core audience. We are not trying to take that original story and take it to a larger audience. The aim is not to stay restricted to the top 1%, who may have seen the English original; the idea is to take it to a larger mass audience or 90%."

"The second thing is, of course, to just clear that it is also a personal thing because I'm an equally big Office fan. So when I am doing the reimagination of The Office, I'm also trying to live up to my own expectations, to my own standards, it's not just, you know, doing it for someone else. Most times when we do these adaptations, it's also being done in the context of us liking it to start with. So as a creative team, we are also extremely sort of wedded to the process and wedded to the characters and equally passionate about it."

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