L.A. Creator Sachin Kumar Launches Prema Creative Co. With Vertical Comedy Series About Indian-American Actor In Hollywood

EXCLUSIVE: L.A.-based creator Sachin Kumar – known as SCKACHI – has launched his own company with a vertical comedy series about the life of a working actor. Kumar’s Prema Creative Co. is producing 14-part series Typecast, which rolls out with two episodes weekly from September 7. Grayson Shapiro is making his directorial debut with the vertical comedy. He served as first assistant director on Obsession, the indie darling horror that made more than $225M and nearly $500M globally after Focus Features acquired at the Toronto International Film Festival. Typecast will follow a fictionalized version of Kumar, an Indian-American actor “navigating Hollywood as he confronts typecasting, ambition and identity.” It will show Indian characters as “fully realized people, without accents played for laughs and without the industry’s familiar shorthand of taxi drivers, tech support, and convenience store clerks.” Also starring are Venk Potula (Four Samosas), who plays Rafi, the protagonist’s manager and lifelong hype man, while Tara Joshi (Schitt’s Creek) plays Tiff, a PR friend who can fix brands but not her own life. The ensemble also features creators Chelsie Sik, Michelle Park, Karan Menon and Jonathan Gaurano. Watch on Deadline “I wanted to make Indian characters who are just people. No accents, no stereotypes, no punchlines,” said Kumar. “Beyond that, Typecast is about bridging two worlds that rarely meet: The slow, traditional system of Hollywood and the fast, modern world of the creator economy. We wanted to prove there is a space where creators can act, actors can create, and both can tell real stories without waiting for permission.” Kumar said the pic’s success was “a proof point for the same creator to Hollywood pipeline Typecast is built on,” as he added that traditional TV and film companies “increasingly treat vertical video as a primary storytelling format rather than an afterthought.” His new company, Prema Creative Co. is being positioned as a studios “built to tell and distribute BIPOC stories.” Prema is the latest example of actors and creatives in Hollywood who are choosing the produce and distribute their own series as a way of owning and controlling rights. Microdramas and YouTube content have, at the same time, become a bigger priority for distributors, with the likes of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms dominating headlines and scoring big at the box office in recent months.