Bhuvan Bam interview: Nobody wants to cast a YouTuber

Actor and YouTuber Bhuvan Bam speaks about his journey from YouTuber to actor, staying true to his massive fanbase, balancing creativity and strategy, and playing Rash Behari Bose in Prime Video’s ‘The Revolutionaries’

Updated - September 17, 2026 11:10 am IST

Bhuvan Bam in a still from ‘The Revolutionaries’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

“I feel nowadays, a good artiste is someone who can market themselves”, says Bhuvan Bam. The actor and YouTuber knows a thing or two about self-promotion, with over 20 million Instagram followers and close to 30 million YouTube subscribers. Bam started his YouTube journey in 2015, uploading skits and sketches about middle-class life. In less than a year, he had over a million subscribers. By 2018, he became the first Indian YouTuber to have over 10 million subscribers.

In 2020, Bam pivoted from sketches to making long-form shows. He released Dhindora in 2021; the episodic narrative had Bam playing his popular characters like Titu Mama. Following its thunderous success, the streaming landscape came calling.

In 2023, he co-wrote, co-created, produced and starred in JioHotstar’s Taaza Khabar , a rags-to-riches fable about greed centred on a young man who discovered he could predict the following day’s news. 2026 sees Bam stepping into his ‘actor era’, with his first lead role in a streaming show not produced by him. In Prime Video’s recently released The Revolutionaries, Bam plays Rash Behari Bose, a mastermind who makes it his life’s mission to cripple British rule in the early 1910s. Next year, he’ll be seen as the star of Dharma Productions’ Kuku Ki Kundali, a comedy directed by Sharan Sharma.

Bhuvan Bam in a still from ‘The Revolutionaries’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

In a freewheeling chat, Bam spoke to The Hindu about his meteoric rise, his journey from YouTuber to storyteller to actor, staying true to his massive fanbase, balancing creativity and strategy, and why he had to travel to the World Economic Forum in Davos to pitch Dhindhora.

I want to go back to the start of your ‘storytelling chapter’, when you were co-writing and co-creating streaming shows you star in. It started with ‘Dhindhora’ back in 2021. What went through your mind when you first thought about the idea? Did people tell you you were crazy?

Only two or three people on my team knew I was thinking of something like this. I hustled a lot for that show; I’m very proud of it. I initially thought of it as a movie, but then Sacred Games came out, and OTT shows started in India. I thought, ‘What if I divide the movie into eight episodes?’ I had met Susan Wojcicki (YouTube CEO) briefly when she came to Mumbai, and I mentioned I wanted to do something bigger with my characters, and she told me to meet her whenever I was done ideating.

When the concept for Dhindhora was clear in my head, I realised she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos. So I spoke to my YouTube India team, and I asked them to make it happen. I was the only young chap in Switzerland amidst all these world leaders, and I met her during a party and started pitching the show, and she said, “I don’t want to listen. We’re making the show.” That’s when I started telling people that I was doing something like this.

Then we started pre-production. It was the first time my team and I used outside vendors and worked with a crew, and none of them understood what we were doing. They would see me shoot scenes as one character, then change and come back as another character and shoot those scenes. They found it very strange.

Then the show comes out, and it becomes a smash hit, getting hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. At that point, was everyone calling you with acting offers?

No. No one wanted a YouTuber. Even after I’d proven myself with Dhindhora. I thought my life would change, but nothing actually changed. I’m glad the calls didn’t come because that meant I got to make Taaza Khabar. It was Hussan and Abbas (Dalal)’s script. I wrote Dhindhora with them, and they told me this idea, and we started working on it together. We pitched that show to almost every platform, but only Hotstar agreed. The other platforms were only happy to do it if we went with an actor of their choice. I said, “I’ve spent six months with this world and this character. It has to be me”. And then we made it, and it did wonders for me. Even today, I meet so many directors and producers who tell me that you could make a movie out of Taaza Khabar and it would do crazy numbers in theatres because it has all of those masala tropes.