Paula McGlynn Age, Boyfriend, Husband, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Paula McGlynn

• Paula McGlynn is a Mumbai-based Canadian actress, writer, producer, director, and entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Founding Director of the creative video production service Gulbadan Talkies Pvt. Ltd. and the Marathi entertainment company Bharatiya Digital Party (BhaDiPa). She is known for co-directing the Marathi web series Shanti Kranti (2021), Pandu (2019), and Once a Year (2019).

• Her interest in filmmaking sparked during her high school years after watching a BBC documentary titled Planet Earth in her geography class. She talked about the same in an interview and said,
  

  I was never a film buff, but this documentary was done splendidly. I remember thinking, it doesn’t matter what I do with my life as long as I learn filmmaking and make a career of it.”

• She received the Praxis Student Screenplay Award in 2011 and secured a position in the DOXA Kris Anderson Youth Connexions program in May 2012.

• In 2012, she finished her film production program, presenting her thesis film My Uncle Terry. The film was chosen for screening at the Montreal World Film Festival and Moonrise Film Festival.

• She appeared in the Canadian English-language short film Across the Street (2012) as Swat 3.

• Thereafter, she starred in the Canadian English-language short film The Worst Day Ever (2012), the Marathi short film An Essay of the Rain (2017), and the Urdu-language Firdaws (2019).

• In 2013, she played the role of an Army Recruitment Secretary in the Canadian English-language film Mop King.

• Many eyebrows were raised when Sarang chose Paula as his future wife. While Sarang hails from Pune, Paula comes from a Canadian family. The two first met at a TIFF Mumbai filmmaker’s party in Toronto and started dating around 2013-14.

• In May 2010, McGlynn started working as a Master of Ceremonies at the North Vancouver Recreation and Culture Commission (NVRC). She worked there for three years. Simultaneously, she also took on the position of a sound engineer at Soundswrite in North Vancouver. In this role, she utilized ProTools to record voiceovers and performed fundamental track editing and cleanup tasks.

• At the age of 22, after completing her four-year degree, she discovered an internship opportunity in India, fully funded by the Government of Canada. After that, she moved from Canada to India and initially resided in Chennai, where she researched the Indian film industry and also interviewed various celebrities from the industry. She crossed paths with Anurag Kashyap and Sriram Raghavan during a film-related workshop at IIT Madras. The most memorable part of her internship was her time in Mumbai and Pune, where she ventured into regional cinema.

• After returning to Canada, around two and a half months later, she soon found herself back in India for a different assignment, tasked with promoting a collaboration between the film industries of Canada and India. This venture aimed to initiate a joint film production agreement between the two nations. Following this assignment, she returned to Canada once again.

• However, her third trip to India marked a turning point in her career. Invited to assist with a Marathi drama romance titled CRD, she was picked up by the casting director and chief assistant to the director from Dadar TT to travel to Pune for a project. This journey introduced her to Sarang Sathaye and Anusha Nandakumar, with whom she discussed a shared dream of establishing something related to Indian cinema. In 2014, approximately seven months after their initial meeting, they launched Gulbadan Talkies, a creative video production service boutique based in Mumbai, India.
  

• Initially, they did various odd jobs like recording weddings and organizing events. Over time, their services expanded to the production of television and digital ads, brand videos, vox pops, music videos, and event management. Gulbadan Talkies successfully created content for well-known brands such as ICICI Bank and Hindustan Unilever, including the production of Fisher Price’s TVC featuring Shruti Seth.

• Their breakthrough came during a conference on the thriving Indian digital sphere in Mumbai. During the event, people talked about how the Marathi film industry is changing which made the trio think about starting to create content in Marathi. In April 2016, Paula McGlynn, along with Sarang Sathaye and Anusha Nandakumar, co-founded the Marathi entertainment company BhaDiPa.

• BhaDiPa, one of the first platforms that produced Marathi digital content, gained popularity with its successful Marathi satirical talk show, “Casting Couch with Amey and Nipun” (2016), hosted by Amey Wagh and Nipun Dharmadhikari. The show featured seven episodes with celebrity guests like Sai Tamhankar, Shriya Pilgaonkar, and Radhika Apte, and gained 25,000 subscribers within a month.

• BhaDiPa operates under channels BhaDipa, Bha2Pa, and Vishay Khol and produces diverse content spanning comedy, travel, music, and political infotainment.

• In 2017, BhaDiPa organized the Marathi stand-up comedy event Secret Marathi Stand-up with comedians like Sarang Sathaye, Aditya Desai, Gaurav Pawar, Divya Kharnare, Omkar Rege, Darshan Sonvale, Chetan Muley, and Nipun Dharmadhikari. Shows were hosted in various cities.

• In the same year, BhaDiPa received awards like the Talent Track Awards 2018 for “Digital Content Company of the Year – Regional” and the Zee Marathi Comedy Awards in 2017 and 2018 for “Best Web Series.”

• In 2017, she took on the role of a judge in the Hindi web series Girl in the City.

• The venture expanded into music, releasing original songs like “Suii Suii” in collaboration with A V Prafullachandra on Valentine’s Day 2021.

• BhaDiPa collaborated with comedian Abish Mathew in 2018, producing the short film “Aai ani Me.” Notable works by BhaDiPa include the Harry Potter spoof video, “If Hogwarts Was a Marathi School,” and series like “Aaplya Baapachi” and “Miss Manners che Sanskar Varga.”

• By October 2018, BhaDiPa achieved 150 million views across its Facebook page and YouTube Channel, with over 1 million followers. BhaDiPa produced neutral election-related content for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, receiving funding from the Google News Initiative. They launched “Lok Manch,” engaging with political figures like Devendra Fadnavis, Raju Shetti, and Supriya Sule.

• In April 2019, Lokmat Media acquired a stake in Gulbadan Talkies Private Limited.
  

  The joint managing director and editorial director of Lokmat Media Rishi Darda with the founders of Gulbadan Talkies, Paula McGlynn (CEO), Sarang Sathaye, and Anusha Nandakumar

• BhaDiPa created web series such as Pandu (2019) available on MX Player and Chikatgunde (2020) on YouTube. Pandu presents a humorous narrative of the daily life of a Mumbai policeman.

• In 2019, she played Sarah Parker in the Hindi thriller web series The Final Call on ZEE5.

• BhaDiPa, in collaboration with TVF, created the hit Marathi web series Shanti Kranti, which premiered on Sony Liv on 13 August 2021. Paula McGlynn co-directed the series and also played the role of  Paula in it. In 2023, she starred in the second season of the series.

• BhaDiPa reached a significant milestone of 1 million subscribers on YouTube on 23 August 2021, earning them the Golden Play Button.

• In 2022, BhaDiPa produced “B.E.Rojgaar” in collaboration with Scaler. The show featured Sai Tamhankar, Sambhaji Sasane, and Jagdish Kannam. The series became one of the most-watched Marathi web series on YouTube.

• BhaDiPa was honoured with the Digital Content Company of the Year – Regional award at the Talent Track Awards in 2022.
  

• They also created an inclusive responsive media website in 2020 with CreativeWebo Pvt. Ltd in 2022

• BhaDiPa received the Newsmakers Achievers Award in the same year.

• McGlynn also runs the YouTube channel PollywoodVlog, where she shares weekly lifestyle vlogs documenting her experiences working in the film industry in India. Additionally, she maintains a self-titled YouTube channel.

• Apart from that, Paula is a screenwriter and has worked on several projects in the development stage. Her creative portfolio includes directing four short documentaries and web series. She has also contributed as a Sound Designer to various Canadian English-language short films like Margaret and the Dollhouse (2011), Bread of Heaven (2012), and Free Section (2015).

• In 2017, she played the role of Samantha in the Bollywood film Half Girlfriend.

• Paula McGlynn has been honoured twice with the SFU Mobility fund for her research in the film industry. She has successfully created a connection between the film sectors in India and Vancouver. As part of her efforts to enhance this collaboration, she launched the BC – Indian Film & Media Initiative. Furthermore, Paula actively engages with the Indo-Canadian Business Chambers (ICBC) Media & Entertainment Committee, providing consulting services to companies in both British Columbia and India seeking opportunities for market crossover in the film and media industries.

• She portrayed the role of Sonia Gandhi, the former Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, in the Hindi biographical film “Main Atal Hoon” (2024). The film centres around the life of the late former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

• She enjoys consuming alcoholic beverages occasionally.
  

  A snip of Paula McGlynn’s Instagram post showing her drinking habits