The Indian Chandler Bing
Cyrus Broacha, 53, played Cyrus, the Chandler Bing character in Hello Friends, the Indian version of Friends, first aired in 1999
Back in the 1990s, there was a guy called Ajit Pal Mangat who used to do a lot of unofficial Hindi remakes of western shows. He decided to make a version of Friends using mostly MTV VJs. I was one. I played the Chandler Bing character. I hadn’t seen the original, but when I watched it later, I realised he’d cast me because I’m the loudest and won’t stop talking.
Our version was supposed to be very similar to the original. We had the same characters and same storylines, but we had cultural issues. Ross’s wife wasn’t allowed to leave him for another woman – it had to be for a man. Chandler wasn’t allowed to smoke. I think we lost in translation the irreverence, the cheekiness of the show. And we were trying really hard to be like Americans, from the clothes to the hairstyles. They were more or less exactly the same as in the original.
Our series resurfaced online in 2020. It went viral in India. People were making memes of us, talking about how we had murdered the American Friends. It was cruel although, for me, most of it was quite funny. But then I started getting called up by the Indian media, asking why we did the show and what was its aim. You rarely talk about something that doesn’t work in detail. It’s almost like you’d failed your exams.
The Polish David Brent
Piotr Polak, 43, plays Michal Holc, the David Brent character in the Polish version of The Office, first aired in 2021
When I was first cast, I was terrified. Then I remember Canal+ airing the trailer and it was really not good. I don’t think they had worked out the style of The Office, so it was shot like a standard trailer for a funny family sitcom, rather than a mockumentary. When I saw it, I thought: “Oh my God, Polish IMDb is going to kill us!” And people kind of did. They were posting: “Why would anybody do this?”; “Why can’t we make something original?” and “Who the hell is playing this David Brent guy?” At first I laughed. Then it started to hurt.
But after three weeks on air, the show became better. The American version is really funny. And what’s funny in the British version is that it’s not funny – you can’t believe what’s happening. We’ve found something in between and have just finished the fourth season. There’s still a community who won’t watch it as they don’t want to ruin their favourite, but each season brings more fans. I keep getting messages on Instagram like: “Oh my God, my boss is the same.”
Since I’m pretty jumpy and expressive in real life, the director came up with the idea of strapping little weights to my ankles to weigh me down and make me walk more boss-like. So that was the secret of my portrayal.
The worst part about playing Michal? A season takes two months to shoot and for about a week after I still behave like David Brent. I have to stay home. You can’t go out on the streets talking that way.
The Mexican Gossip Girl
Sofía Sisniega, 35, played Sofía López-Haro, the Serena van der Woodsen character in Gossip Girl: Acapulco, first aired in 2013
I wasn’t nervous about taking on Serena. I’d be more scared if I had to play a real-life icon. But I remember some photos of a pre-production shoot were leaked before the show was announced, and a popular blog was quite mean: “Ha ha ha, it’s so ridiculous. They wish they were in Gossip Girl.” I think when the show came out, a lot of people came around.
We shot on location in Acapulco. It was once this glamorous coastal town, but when the war on drugs started it became unsafe. We had the military following us because we were shooting in all these big houses in the middle of nowhere that people couldn’t go to any more. The producers tried to replicate the fashion of the original. They hired a cool styling team who didn’t really take the heat or humidity into consideration. They’d put us in really warm outfits inspired by the New York Gossip Girl – and we’d be melting because we’d be shooting indoors with the AC turned off, sometimes with thick blankets covering the windows.
What’s funny is that after spending so much money on the show, the Mexican network didn’t know where to air it. It was a co-production between Warner Bros and Televisa, who mainly produced conservative soap operas. They didn’t really want a series with a female lead like Serena, who was drinking and sleeping around. So everyone was talking about the show but no one knew where to watch it. I just laughed and thought: “Wow, this is the biggest production you’ve made, but you don’t want to put it on your main channel because my character isn’t a virgin.”
The Colombian Walter White
Diego Trujillo, 64, played Walter Blanco in Metástasis, the Colombian Breaking Bad, first aired in 2014
I’d had a long career in soap operas when I got the call for Metástasis. It was from Sony: they wanted to do a Spanish-language version of Breaking Bad to air across Latin America. I didn’t know about the show – it was still quite small. But then the US version started to become really famous when we were one month into making ours. Our producers thought this was bad but, naively, I thought it was great news: “I’m going to be as famous as Bryan Cranston!”
I remember Bryan sent us a photo of himself on Walter White’s bed with Anna Gunn, who played his wife Skyler. They had a sign saying: “Hello, Metástasis, good luck to you.” We played Walter differently: Bryan’s more expressive, I’m more low profile. I think Bryan’s character evolves more notoriously from chemistry teacher to drug kingpin Heisenberg. I feel my Walter does it in a more subtle way.
The show aired all over Latin America on public TV networks. I started to get messages from people like: “How can you dare to do what Bryan Cranston did?” or “How dare you remake such an amazing show?” But other people said: “I like your version even better.”
There are YouTube videos comparing the two series. You could buy Walter Blanco T-shirts with my face on them, just like the Walter White T-shirts with Bryan’s. At one point I had matching Walter figurines on my desk. I still say it was a privilege to play that role. When I went to Los Angeles to star in Griselda, the producer said: “Hey, you did the Spanish Breaking Bad!”
The Indian Jack Bauer
Anil Kapoor, 67, played Jai Singh Rathod, the Jack Bauer character in the Indian 24, first aired in 2013
I had just played the TV host in Slumdog Millionaire and was in LA trying to get an agent, doing the rounds of studios and executives. I met the people behind 24 at Fox and they said: “Would you like to appear in the show?” I knew about 24. Everyone was watching it in India. My friends said I had to do it.
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I played the president of a fictitious country called Kamistan. I had a few scenes with Kiefer Sutherland but most of my parts were in the UN. I was supposed to do 10 episodes and ended up doing 16. I really liked the way it was written and said to the showrunner Howard Gordon: why not do this in India? Howard said they’d do it on one condition: I played Jack Bauer.
In our first season, just like in the original, my character has 24 hours to save the head of state – except instead of the president of America it’s the prime minister of India who’s in danger. Obviously, the original is original. And there’s nobody better than Kiefer. He is 24. It was a huge responsibility for me, because I thought people were going to compare us, especially since I am a known actor in India. But in the end, people saw Jai Singh Rathod as his own man. He’s different to Jack Bauer in that, at heart, he is very Indian and Indians are definitely more emotional. We are more reactive and family values are much deeper.
We got great reviews and swept up all the TV awards that year. There was even a game of the series, which kids loved. Even now, on social media, people ask me: “When are you doing the third season?”
The Turkish Frank Gallagher
Reha Özcan, 59, played Fikri Elibol, the Frank Gallagher character in Bizim Hikaye, the Turkish Shameless, first aired in 2017
I used to watch the US Shameless with my wife in our bedroom, secretly, because we didn’t want our kids to see it. I remember my wife saying: “One day, I believe that you’re going to be playing that Frank Gallagher.” And I was like: “What wrong did I do to you that you think I should be playing that? Ha!”
It was like a curse taking on the part after William H Macy because the way he played the role in the US version is so iconic. I don’t recall viewers comparing me to him: it was more a challenge inside me. But I’d done a lot of theatre. If you play Hamlet in Turkey, you know that, simultaneously, the character is being portrayed elsewhere.
The original Shameless criticises the system. But it’s not as easy to do that in Turkey as in western countries. There are institutions that control what viewers can experience on national TV. You cannot have an intense intercourse scene or violence. You can’t show affairs – that’s a taboo, too. This obviously made playing Fikri more tricky. When he has an affair with the neighbour, we had to hint at it subtly. Same with the use of pot. Often we’d be surprised by what got past the censor, like easter eggs to salute the original version. Everyone thought it would only last three to four episodes. But it lasted 70.
The Dutch Kathy Beale
Aletta de Nes, 69, played Carolien Martens, the Kathy Beale character in Het Oude Noorden, the Dutch EastEnders, first aired in 1993
Most people in the Netherlands knew about EastEnders, but didn’t watch it regularly. Still, I was excited to be cast in the Dutch version. They built the whole set in Rotterdam, in one of the harbours. That kind of stuff had never happened before in the Netherlands. We all thought: “Whoa! If they do this and it is EastEnders, we have work for 20 years!”
The British scripts were translated. I watched EastEnders a couple of times to see what was going on, but we were starting the story right at the beginning so it was way ahead of us. My character Carolien ran a market stall with her husband. My main memory is of standing outside for hours and hours to sell vegetables and fruit.
In the beginning, there was a lot of commercial attention and people started watching. But the broadcasting company here in the Netherlands made one huge mistake: we only broadcast once a week. There are so many characters that people couldn’t follow it. One week was all about, say, me and my family, then the next week, it was all about someone else. So people got confused and stopped watching.
The Turkish Dawson’s Creek
Daghan Külegeç, 46, played Efe Kaygisiz, the Pacey Witter character in Kavak Yelleri, the Turkish Dawson’s Creek, first aired in 2007
The unofficial Turkish version of Dawson’s Creek started like the original, but by the fourth or fifth season it had become “like a Turkish movie” – which is a phrase used in Turkey to mean a combination of every kind of genre, from crime to romance to horror. The original focuses on the relationships between the show’s young people, but in our version a lot of other stuff happens – characters get kidnapped, released, then kidnapped again. It’s not real life. They changed other things too, like not having any gay characters.
I was 28 when I was cast. It aired on Thursdays at prime time and took something like 40% of the viewing share. Back then, if a show was successful the whole family would watch, so I had teen girl fans but also fathers and grandfathers. I still get big burly guys come up to me saying they grew up watching it.
What looked fun on the surface wasn’t behind the scenes. Episodes were movie-length and we’d be filming one every six days, working 15 hours every day. No one can prepare you for something like that. I got burnout and quit after one year. They convinced me to come back but I quit again a couple of years later.
I was famous – but I didn’t earn a lot of money. The show must have rerun 250 times over the years but actors don’t get royalties in Turkey. I’ve not made a dime off it since filming.