3 min readMumbaiMay 15, 2026 08:09 AM ISTSaif Ali Khan as Sartaj Singh in Sacred Games.Saif Ali Khan has been at the heart of the streaming revolution in India. It began with him donning the uniform and the turban for the role of Sartaj Singh in Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane’s 2017 crime thriller show Sacred Games, which laid the foundation stone 0f Netflix in India. Nine years later, he’s donned the police uniform again for Pulkit’s cop drama Kartavya, which drops on Netflix India on May 15.Saif recalls not feeling any apprehensions to take the leap from the big screen to the small, even though some warned it would be a demotion. “I wasn’t apprehensive at all, actually. I remember we were on a holiday, and it came through. I was so excited. There couldn’t have been a better show to start with, on cops and mafia from those directors,” Saif tells SCREEN in an exclusive interview.He, in fact, saw Sacred Games as what Narcos was to Columbia back then. “Netflix had just finished Narcos, which had become an international phenomenon. And we were also hoping that if you can tell an Indian story on a global platform, how cool would that be,” recalls Saif. He did not, for even a second, considered it an “inferior” medium like television.“There was no confusion in my mind that this would separate completely from television, which for various reasons, is a different animal. The concept is to have as good a quality as one can create. I don’t think the mindset should be that this is inferior in any way to a big-screen movie experience. That was the gamechanger for Netflix — to bring big-screen storytelling to a device and make it intimate and exciting at the same time,” adds Saif.Saif also lauds writers like Varun Grover and Smita Singh, who never dumbed down Vikram Chandra’s 800-page bestseller for its long-format onscreen adaptation. “We had the best writers trying to be as clever as possible. Sometimes, we were in setups where there were people who said, ‘Will everyone understand? Let’s try to bring it down a little bit.’ But these guys were talking about Vasco de Gama,” says Saif, laughing and adding that he “felt very much at home, intellectually”. “It was a really good feeling. It was a no-brainer for me,” he reiterates.Also Read — Amitabh Bachchan says he’s spending sleepless nights at 83: ‘Work is more important than sleep’It helped that Saif has been a voracious reader for years. He was not only aware of the book, but also managed to convey what was left unsaid between the lines through Sartaj in both season 1 and season 2 (2019). He reveals that his younger sons — Taimur Ali Khan and Jehangir Ali Khan aka Jeh — are still discovering that he was part of something as historic to the Indian streaming scene. “Just yesterday, in the school library, Taimur pulled out a book and said, ‘Look, this is such a big book!’ (Laughs) It was Sacred Games,” says Saif, signing off.Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.© IE Online Media Services Pvt LtdTags:Sacred GamesSaif Ali KhanAdvertisementLoading Recommendations...Advertisement