Rohit Roy has never hidden the fact that television made him a household name. Which makes it a little jarring to hear him call the medium a dustbin on camera.

The actor, who became a star with Doordarshan's Swabhimaan back in the 1990s, made the comment while appearing on the Kindle Cast YouTube channel. Asked about the so-called caste system inside the entertainment business, where TV actors are often ranked below film actors, Roy didn't dodge the question. He leaned into it.

"Cinema is cinema. It is for posterity. Television is a dustbin medium," he said, drawing a line most industry insiders whisper about but rarely say out loud.

His argument wasn't really about talent. It was about conduct. Roy said the gap shows up the moment actors step in front of a camera outside their own sets, at events, at airports, wherever the paparazzi gather.

"You see any public appearance of a film actor, you see the carriage with which he or she comes out, especially if they are a star," he said. "Of course, everyone puts on a front. We have to put on a front. But their front is graceful, dignified, stylish, cool. There is a certain amount of style, class."

And television actors, in his telling, don't quite manage the same trick. "You see another gathering with lots of TV actors. Look at the way they behave, you will get your answer yourself," he said, leaving the specifics to the imagination.

Roy also brought up dignity in front of the camera as a kind of professional duty. "You have to conduct yourself with a certain amount of grace, dignity. You can't do hoo-haa and make stupid comments because you know the paparazzi is there," he said.

Then came clothes. Roy said film stars wear revealing outfits too, but styled with more intent. He didn't name names outright, though he did take a swipe at one unnamed figure. "I don't know the name of this particular lady who is rampant all over social media but she hardly wears anything. So why are you… You are going to treat them badly," he said, the sentence trailing off without quite finishing its own thought.

None of this is new terrain for Bollywood versus TV debates, which have simmered for decades without much resolution. What's different here is who's saying it. Roy has spent a big chunk of his career on the small screen and still returns to it. His own comments rank the medium below the one he's tried to break into repeatedly over the years.

Whether other TV actors respond to being lumped together and found wanting is the open question now. Roy didn't name a single television colleague directly, which leaves plenty of room for someone to feel the comment was aimed at them.