Actor Adarsh Gourav says he feels happy that he is not a recognisable face in public despite a filmography of many critical hits and finds the anonymity quite normal. Gourav has stepped into documentary storytelling with ‘Voices of the Land’, a new series that explores the rich cultural heritage of India’s northeastern region.

According to a PTI report from New Delhi yesterday, Gourav said north-east India was a place where people didn’t recognise the actor, who has proved his versatility as an artiste with varied performances in movies such as ‘The White Tiger”, ‘Mom’, ‘Kho Gaye Hum Kahan’, ‘Superboys of Malegaon’ and series ‘Guns & Gulaab’. 

“They were told that I was an actor, and I’m sure some of them Googled me later. They were like, ‘Okay, he’s done this film and that film’,” Gourav told PTI in an interview.

Asked if the anonymity was refreshing for him, the actor said, “I find that anonymity every day. I’m not that recognizable. The kind of films that I’ve done have largely been niche films. They aren’t huge commercial films that release on 5,000 screens across the country.” 

He said it is difficult for actors, who are either stars or rising stars, to remain anonymous in public. “For me, not being recognised is actually normal. So not being recognised in the Northeast felt like normal life. The day everybody starts recognising me-that’s when things will start feeling abnormal,” he said.

‘Voices of the Land’ will see Gourav journey across the Northeast as he connects with indigenous communities through their music, folklore, rituals, oral histories, and everyday lives.

Gourav said he has a “very low threshold for cities” and the docuseries offered him a chance to distance himself from the hustle and bustle of urban life.

“I just wanted to get out of the rut of the city and get away from anything related to urban life. I start feeling saturated very quickly. If I don’t run away to a place that has a lot of nature every few weeks, I start feeling burnt out,” he said.

Another reason for doing the show was to experience a kind of tribal lifestyle that people have only read about in books and interact with people who are still “so protected from the way city people think”.

“The way we function on a day-to-day basis is so completely out of sync with what people were originally like when they lived in forests and jungles. I really resonate with that because I grew up around a lot of nature when I was young in Jamshedpur.

“For me, this was about reconnecting with myself, reliving a childhood fantasy, and then, of course, getting to know different tribes, their history, their culture and everything connected with their way of life. Actually living with them, asking them questions and simply observing them-it was such a wholesome experience,” he said.

The 31-year-old actor said he grew up watching travel content and always had a fantasy to be a part of a travel show.

“I even remember writing to Nat Geo when I was in college because I wanted to intern with them. So it’s been something that I’ve always wanted to do. I guess life just presented that opportunity to me in the form of this show. It was such a brilliant chance to explore a relatively unexplored side of India,” Gourav said, adding that he had visited the Northeast twice before.

 Backed by Edstead in collaboration with Air India Express and Dentsu Sports & Entertainment, ‘Voices of the Land’ will premiere on JioHotstar in July 2026. (Image of Gourav from Ridley Scott-produced sci-fi series ‘Alien: Earth’.)