Actor Jim Sarbh has won the Filmfare OTT award for Best Actor in a drama series for essaying the role of scientist Dr Homi Bhabha in the SonyLIV series Rocket Boys (RB). He told Parsiana that he was "grateful, first and foremost, for getting the opportunity to play Bhabha, for working on a web series that focuses on such interesting scientists, for taking Indian revolutionaries and making them human and flawed and brilliant all at the same time.” OTT refers to the delivery of film and television content over the internet.
Jim Sarbh with his Filmfare OTT award
The series portrays the lives of Bhabha and his contemporary Dr Vikram Sarabhai, with the role of the latter essayed by Ishwak Singh (see "A blast from the past,” Parsiana, March 21-April 6, 2022). The awards ceremony took place on December 21, 2022. Filmfare.com noted that "walking down the carpet today is Jim Sarbh, looking stylish as ever in a black suit.” The award "feels lovely because the hard work (director) Abhay Pannu and the team put into creating the character has touched people.”
Besides the accolade for Sarbh, RB garnered other awards including Best Series and Best Director for Pannu, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematographer.
Awardees are selected from Hindi web original shows or films released across Indian OTT platforms between August 1, 2021 and July 30, 2022. "The Filmfare Awards initially started off as an entity that honored excellence in Hindi cinema. Following that, we included South cinema, followed by Marathi, Bengali, and even Punjabi cinema. Two years ago, we started the OTT awards and the industry warmly welcomed the move and has been with us every step of the way,” notes their website. The award, a statuette depicting a woman whose arms are upraised in a dance pose with her fingers touching, is commonly referred to as The Black Lady.
Sarbh was earlier nominated for two Filmfare Awards for his supporting roles in the films Neerja (2017) and Padmaavat (2019).