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Guess who we spotted in a new ad for Discovery?
He's an adman we know well and this isn't his first time in front of the camera...
A few seconds into the new Discovery Communications India (DCIN) TVC, designed for its monthly subscription pack of Rs 8, a Taproot Dentsu creative and we spot Sumanto Chattopadhyay, more fondly known as Sumo, in the ad world.
We caught up with the Chattopadhyay, chairman, CCO of WPP's newly launched 82.5 Communications, an Ogilvy group agency, for a candid chat. A few minutes into the conversation, as he talks about being bitten by the acting bug, he explains how his love for acting goes back a long way and was, to an extent, also kindled by his grandmother, who, as he reveals (quite humbly), was the grandniece of Rabindranath Tagore. He went on to share that although she was quite a few years younger than him, she had acted opposite Tagore in one of his plays.
An MBA from McGill University in Canada, Chattopadhyay's first brush with acting and writing was during his childhood, while still a school-going boy in Tanzania.
"My teacher gave me a one-page story and asked me to rewrite it as a play. I did. And I acted in it as well. That's when I developed a love for the art. But then there was a very long break when I didn't have anything more to do with it, till I came to work in Mumbai and was offered roles in both a play and a film. The play was - Barefoot in Mumbai. The film was Kumar Shahani's - Char Adhyay, based on Tagore's novel," recalls the ad man.
Sumanto Chattopadhyay in Piku
Sumanto Chattopadhyay in White Bee
Apart from bagging a few meaty roles in filmmaker Shomshuklla Das' international film, 'White Bee' and a Bengali drama, 'Taan' in 2014, the ex-chairman and CCO, Soho Square has made a handful of guest appearances in other films with the who's who of the industry. From sharing screen space with Amitabh Bachchan and Deepika Padukone in 'Piku' to the Peter England ad with Kareena Kapoor, some of his latest appearances include featuring in the Hindi flick - Helicopter Leela, a mother-son drama, directed by Pradeep Sarkar, where he plays himself - 'Sumo, a creative director'.
In a rather interesting turn of events, it was curious to find him making a guest appearance in a spot by an immediate rival agency. "I was there purely as a model; so my day job didn't come into the picture," was his quick, zero-inhibition response when it came up.
A quick look at the acting/modelling projects in his kitty looks promising:
"I recently started a Facebook page called The English Nut which is a light-hearted approach to improving peoples' English. I have also written and performed in all the videos on the page," Chattopadhyay shares.
A self-proclaimed theatre aficionado, Chattopadhyay has travelled around France and Spain to attend various theatre workshops (a super exciting alternative to a regular vacation, he quips). He has also modelled in a photo series called Urban Sadhu. It is on the photo website and featured in the November 2018 issue of 'The Man' magazine.
Admen-turning into actors is not a 'never-seen-before' phenomenon in the 'bizz'. Gajraj Rao, the ad filmmaker who started off with Code Red Films, has played a pivotal role in the Bollywood blockbuster - Badhaai Ho.
Actor Rahul Bose was a former copywriter with Rediffusion - Y&R and his love for acting, which later proved to be greater than his love for writing, led the Mr. and Mrs. Iyer star to quit the agency at the age of 26.
When asked if he could share details about future acting gigs, Chattopadhyay has to say, "For me, acting has always happened when an opportunity has serendipitously come along. So, I'm sure something will."