With Gullak Season 4, Jameel Khan returns as a government employee Santosh Mishra. As head of the Mishra family, Santosh and his wife Shanti (Geetanjali Kulkarni) navigate small-town life with their sons Annu (Vaibhav Raj Gupta) and Aman (Harsh Mayar). The award-winning show is already winning raves for continuing its charming ways in this latest season. Khan has been working in Bollywood for over two decades in films like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Gangs of Wasseypur, Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram Leela and Pagglait. He discussed how he approaches playing Santosh Mishra, his longest-running character, and why Gullak can keep going on forever.
Jameel Khan on Gullak’s Santosh Mishra
The Mishra family in Gullak Season 4 continue to have fun adventures and their love for one another grows. The parents and children learn from each other as the seasons progress as well. In an interview with Zoom, Jameel Khan revealed how he approached his character. He said, “I have always maintained a balance between authoritativeness and giving a certain kind of freedom and liberty to the kids. I wouldn’t say leeway to [Shanti] because she is, as far as I am considered, treated as an equal. But the kids, because they are not yet as mature as they ought to be, have to be led and directed in a certain way, which is what I do. Yes, there would be conflicts, but it has to be dealt with. We, as parents, do make mistakes and we’ve got to admit it and go ahead with it. Just as kids are learning, we as parents are also learning all the time.”
Working together for six years on this show, the cast and crew have become like an extended family; Khan called them “a family away from family”. He also admitted that the first season of Gullak never really registered for him. When he came back to shoot Gullak Season 2, he enjoyed the experience of being a part of the Mishra family. This has become the longest he’s ever played a role and he said going back to the Gullak set was always a joy.
More pressure on the makers to deliver
Jameel Khan felt that more than the actors, the makers of Gullak have a larger challenge on their hands to keep coming back strong each season. The cast has already established themselves as the Mishras. The fourth season is led by director Shreyansh Pandey and writer Vidit Tripathi.
The actor stated, “They have managed to retain the flavour and the quality of the show which is fantastic and laudable. We continue to give as much as we can on the sets with our contributions and improvisations and all that, but primarily if the script is not up to the mark, then it doesn’t hit that well.”
The reason Gullak also stands out amongst all the other family shows on OTT is because it’s so easily relatable. Khan explained, “Why Gullak works is because of its honesty [and] hard work that the writing team puts in and the director, the creator, they all go through this and then the actors come in and lend their bit, so every department has come in wonderfully together and collaborates to make it into a great and fantastic show. Nobody takes it easy.”
Khan, who will next be seen in the series Mandala Murders, Hajamat and Bakbak, wished that Gullak could keep going on for several seasons. He said, “There’s so much happening in a middle-class life that there is so much material you can keep finding and turn pages and pages, you’ll find incidents and anecdotes about the middle-class which you can keep getting on to the screen. It’s endless.”
