MUMBAI: How did you guide the actors in developing characters that remain consistent yet evolve across the dual timelines of the series?
We started with a workshop where Saurabh Sachdeva, a very talented actor himself, served as our acting coach. We workshopped with the actors, did character analysis, and went through the screenplay to prepare them for the challenging roles they were about to play, especially Kritika and Dhairya, who had to journey from 1990 to 2016. That was quite a challenge. Once the workshop was over, I began having individual sessions with each of the actors. I thought this was a very important and fruitful exercise because all three of my actors have different methods and approaches to their performances. I had to gain their trust by understanding how they approached their roles. So, I had to understand the different methods consciously and subconsciously followed by Raghav, Kritika, and Dhairya. Once I understood that, I figured out that the way I interacted with each of them as a director had to be different. I was essentially speaking different languages to my three actors, understanding their personal needs and requirements. They were so dedicated and disciplined in their craft that they gave their full 100% support. It was a very complex process through which these performances emerged, but I think we did well. Moving forward, I believe they will continue to improve because, by the end of the shoot, they had understood their characters so well that they could switch on and off effortlessly. It was a very complicated process, but it led to the powerful performances we see.
In hindsight, based on audience and critic reactions, would you have done anything differently in Gyaarah Gyaarah?
If I could have done something differently, I probably would have tried to buy more time for each episode. The mandatory limit given to me was 30 minutes per episode. I did overshoot that limit, but I feel that if I had an hour for each episode, I could have given you more fleshed-out characters and more subplots in terms of backstories. However, that would have made the entire exercise more challenging for me and my writers. Because when you’re working with a 40–45-minute episode, you’re trying to hold the audience’s attention, and if we had 60 minutes, we could have gone into more detail and depth. The challenge would have been to maintain the same pace and rhythm of the series. But yes, I would have explored more of the backstory and subplots if given more time. Other than that, not much else.
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