MUMBAI: Actress Farnaz Shetty is on cloud nine! Her debut web series VideoCam Scam has been recently released and has got a great welcome by her fans. She says that people want to know more about the topic it’s based on - sextortion.

“If I talk about the video cam scam, it's a recent subject that everyone is struggling with and people are not open about it on sextortion. Previously, it used to be extortion and now sextortion because it’s easily available and its a breach of trust. People do sometimes, between the couple, sometimes it just happens to any random people. People have rackets where they do such scams to threaten innocent people. So we focused on all the aspects of the subject,” she says. 

While she did not relate to the character, it added to the fun of playing her on screen, she says. “Why I chose to do this was because I honestly felt that this character is nowhere close to me. When I heard about this subject, I was like ‘aisa bhi kuch hota hai?’ No one in my circle of friends, never ever happened to talk on this subject. So, for me, it was really new. I never knew that something like sextortion also happens and people are victimised so brutally. And in my real life, I definitely cannot be a scammer. But onscreen, if I get a chance like this, it's fun to do. It's always fun to play negative roles because they have so many layers and shades to it. So for that reason I felt that this is something I want to do and it just grabbed my attention,” she says. 

Talking about her character, she says, “My character name is Sweety. I live with two of my friends. One is Sonu and Titu . So these three of them live in disguise. They want an easy life. They are failures. College dropouts. The stupid idea pops into their head and that gives them a kick, a kick where they can make easy money without going anywhere, without doing anything and that's how they start scamming people and they choose that easy life for them.”

She says that this series is very different from all that is out there on OTT. “The first thing is that sextortion has never been covered so far. It's a very deep and recent subject where actresses Rashmika Mandana and Alia Bhatt and all these actresses got trapped in Deepfake but we made our project before that. So it's a recent subject that everybody is very scared about but people don't come in and talk about it openly. Even the real victims and real people who have not done it and yet they become the victim of these scammers and that's why the subject stands out. It’s a very sensitive subject and I'm really happy to be associated with something like that which will get alot of awareness to the audience and I myself have learnt so much from it,” she says. 

Ask her how it was to work with actors Rajniesh Duggal, Amruta Khanvilkar, and Aradhana Sharma, and she says, “I had an incredible working relationship with producer Pavan Malu, director Vaibhav Khisti, DOP Amey, Actor Rajneish Duggall , Amruta Khanvilkar, Kunj Anand, Aradhana Sharma, all these were amazing. We worked like a family. The kind of bond we share on and off screen is incredible. In fact, off screen producers and everybody made us so comfortable that we never felt like we had associated only for this project. The bond was and is so thick. They gave us all the comfort that comes on screen when you see us perform and it was such a great experience to share screen with all of them.”