Mumbai: In an exclusive interview with director Nagesh Kukunoor and co-stars Amit Sial, Sahil Vaid, and Vidyuth Gargi, where they discussed the making of ‘The Hunt- The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case,’ a show based on Anirudhya Mitra's book ‘90 Days.’ After that, the Cast members shared their experiences and memories of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, discussing their characters and preparation. Also, revealed that the show's creators handled sensitive topics with care, acknowledging the potential for controversy.
00:00Welcome to INS. So we'll start with you because you are captain of the ship. So we'll start with you. The Hunt trailer looks amazing and like because I was there in 1991. So I was very small in school and it brings back memory of course.
00:21But a show of this level, The Hunt. So how long did it take for you to think from conceptualization to the implementation of the shoot and how did this idea come to your mind?
00:35Well actually the idea was pitched by Anirudhya Mitra who wrote the book 90 days on which the show is based. He was the one who pitched it to applause.
00:46And Sameer Nayar who heads applause reached out to me. We've been doing a lot of shows with them. So he asked me if I'd be interested and my initial instinct was to say no because I didn't want to do anything political.
01:01But he said this is nothing to do with politics as much as it has everything to do with a true crime thriller, a police procedural if you will. So that's what got me excited.
01:14And then once I read the book, I knew how I wanted to approach it. So from that moment, if you'd actually take the whole journey, it was still about 15 months or so.
01:26Not to mention the amount of time that Anirudhya took to write the book and then bring it to the bring it to applause.
01:32So we finally finished this show a little bit last year. Yeah, I'd say about 15 months.
01:39But a show of this kind needs, you know, some extra research also.
01:44Correct.
01:45So from your level or from your team level, you know, I mean, did you speak to the people connected with the case? Did you get a chance to speak to people connected with the case?
01:56So it was a decision that applause as the producer took that we would keep the entire focus on the book because then we can trace it back to how we approached each scene or each incident.
02:16The thing is with an event of this magnitude, there were a lot of people involved and a lot of them wrote books, a lot of them had points of view.
02:25So we couldn't clutter this whole thing and make a mess of different people with different, you know, angles.
02:31So we had to keep it to one and we chose Anirudhya's version of the events because he was a journalist during that time and a lot of it are his first hand accounts.
02:45So that's how we went about it.
02:47So now I will come to you Ahad sir. Do you have memories of this incident?
02:51Yeah, yeah, of course, as you have, me too. I think I was in school, I was around 16 when this happened. And yeah, very, I don't like my memories entail more of a feel than visual memories.
03:10Like I know how the country felt at that moment, how my neighbors felt, what the kind of gloom it brought with it. I remember that clearly. Yeah.
03:24Wow. And since you are, you know, leading the team in the show, did you refer to any of those characters like or, you know, was it completely?
03:37Yeah, I, I, I read a lot about Mr. Karthike and his life. I saw a lot of his online interviews.
03:49So a lot of pictures that were available online. And actually one of the interviews really helped me because he was talking about the case itself.
03:57He was generally talking about what he had, you know, his service tenure and what all it entailed.
04:04And then this case also he discussed about not going to detail, not divulging too many details or not going too deep into it, which then of course we had the script through the book.
04:18And actually I didn't have, honestly, didn't have that much time to do, do the case research per se. Right.
04:28So I was relying heavily on Nagesh Bhai, the script and, and couple of my co-actors and Mr. Bucks. I think he's, he's an encyclopedia on this case.
04:43Yeah. And, yeah, but I did a lot of, a lot of research because I had to, it was a huge responsibility to get Mr. Karthike and right.
04:53You know, just right. You know, and at least the effort should show that I, you know, I've tried to do it right.
05:01I, hopefully I have done it right. I don't know yet. We'll let the audience talk about that. But yeah, I did go through a lot of articles and videos to get Karthike and right.
05:14So, you spoke about conversation with neighbors, you know, about, obviously it was, I don't know, I remember, you know, what all was the conversation.
05:25But if I ask you one, some memory of Rajivandi because it, I mean, it was like he used to come on Dhul Arshan and we used to listen to him.
05:34Yeah, he was a heartthrob. He was a, he was like a heartthrob PM, you know, of the country. Totally. And very, very popular with the ladies.
05:43And, and see, I was, I was little when the assassination of Indira Gandhi happened, right. Then I was too little to maybe understand it that much.
05:56But then over a period of time till I started growing up, you know, then this happened. So, actually, there is a line that Karthike says, yeah, the, the unlucky part of Gandhi family being unlucky.
06:09Yeah. Yeah. And I could completely, you know, absorb that line while, when I said it in the series, because I completely felt it. I completely felt it because I've actually felt it in my real life also.
06:23You know, and, yeah, yeah.
06:27And, Sahil, we'll come to you now. He just spoke that you are encyclopedia on this day.
06:32Not him. Not me. Okay. Mr. Bucks. Mr. Bucks who's left. Mr. Bhagwati Perumal.
06:37Okay. Okay. I'm so sorry. He's also quite intelligent. Doesn't mean that to me.
06:40It's Perumal or Perumal? Perumal. Perumal.
06:44I've been calling him Perumal. Okay. Okay. Because you look quite young. So, were you born at that time?
06:49I was seven years old and I was in Tamil Nadu.
06:52Tamil Nadu. I was living in Tamil Nadu when this happened.
06:55Oh. I was in Salem, not very far away from when this happened. And I remember people talking about it a lot.
07:04I remember people gossiping about it. I remember people making their own conspiracy theories.
07:14I remember our conversation very clearly where people were telling each other where the bomb might be.
07:24Somebody said,
07:27That means,
07:29That means,
07:30Somebody was saying,
07:32Somebody was saying,
07:33People would,
07:35I remember people only talked about this for days.
07:39And,
07:40Yeah, they did actually.
07:42And nobody could believe that something like this had happened. And everybody just, especially in Tamil Nadu, living there, this was the one thing that everybody spoke about.
07:56At that time,
07:58Six, seven year old boy, whatever I could gather, was an important person.
08:05Also because it brings a certain kind of repute to the place where it's happened.
08:08Yeah. Correct.
08:09And by the people that it's happened at the hands of.
08:11Correct.
08:12Yeah.
08:13Also tell us about your character and how did you prepare for it?
08:17I play superintendent of police, Amit Verma.
08:25There were many ways we prepared for our characters. One obviously was the same thing that Amit Bhai said. A lot came from Nagesh sir.
08:35His inputs kind of guided us to kind of, because there were these nuggets of information he would keep giving us during the shoot.
08:43He was like that. He did this.
08:46And with all of those little, little things that our characters had done in the past, we kind of pieced together a personality which kind of wasn't very difficult after having conversations with him over chai or over breakfast before the shoot or after the shoot.
09:03Plus, whatever little is available on the internet. Because once you get a part, once you're told that you're going to play this role, your first instinct is to try and find out as much about, there's not a lot available.
09:20Hardly any pictures of SP Amit Verma are available on the internet.
09:24Yeah.
09:25Hardly four lines about each of these officers is written on a website where they are described.
09:33As part of the team.
09:34That's all we had to do. And again, like you said earlier in the day, fill in the blanks.
09:42Fill in the blanks became very easy with his inputs. So that's how you prepare for a role. I know I was the rebel kid in the gang. I was the fiery one. So you just had to find moments to kind of let that fire out.
09:57So tell us about your memories of the incident if you have any.
10:03I was not born yet. I was born three years later. And I remember I think around 98, 99, when I was 5, 6, my mother told me about it. And it was the first time I had heard about a suicide bomber.
10:16Which was too disturbing for me at the time. My mother decided she will not tell me such things anymore.
10:22Actually India got to know about suicide bomber.
10:24Yeah.
10:25Due to this incident.
10:26I think the whole world.
10:27The whole world, yeah.
10:28Very new.
10:29Correct.
10:30That's the only memory I had as a kid, my mother telling me.
10:33Yeah. And also please elaborate a bit about your character.
10:37So I play Captain Ravindran, now Major Ravi. He was NSG, the captain of the Black Cat Command.
10:45And basically the investigative team would investigate and they needed someone to execute their plans.
10:55And that was the job of Captain Ravindran and his men. And what was your question exactly?
11:04No, just I wanted to speak more about your character.
11:06Elaborate on your character.
11:07On the character.
11:08Well, honestly everything I got about the character was from Nagesh sir.
11:14There is not much on the internet about Captain Ravindran until 1991.
11:19After that there is a lot because he became a filmmaker, he used to consult on films and stuff.
11:24But there was not a lot to glean there for me.
11:27There was nothing, no information I could use.
11:29So at some point I even took the book, I read the book as well.
11:33I started reading the book.
11:34But then I realised that Nagesh sir and the writers are adapting the book also.
11:40This is another adaptation.
11:42So I decided that I am just going to go with what the text is giving because the script was very rich.
11:49It gave me a lot to work with.
11:51And of course Nagesh sir's vision was quite helpful.
11:56I mean I think one of the first things he told me was this guy is a rock star.
12:03He started with that and then from there we had to find out who you are.
12:09Nagesh sir, how difficult was it to create the scene of the blast?
12:12Because obviously in my memory that I have, I say, Sabdikharewe, Tutewe, what was it like?
12:21You know, creatively I don't show the blast.
12:25Right?
12:26So the camera moves away from the actual area and then you just hear the blast, you don't see it.
12:32But what you see is the aftermath of the blast.
12:35So I had to walk that fine line in showing the carnage and not showing the carnage.
12:43So if you see, there are some elements, it was a bloody mess when the bomb went off.
12:49But at the same time nothing to sensationalize it.
12:52The camera just kind of shows that because I couldn't completely sanitize it and not show anything.
12:58Right?
12:59So I had to creatively pick that because it's such a painful memory for everyone involved including the family.
13:05The family, yeah.
13:06That I didn't want to go down that road of showing the actual mess which the real, the photographers who were on location that day,
13:15they had just taken all the pictures of the carnage and they had published it.
13:19So I didn't want to recreate that.
13:21In the promo, I saw there was a dialogue where you are referring to the Kennedy murder case.
13:27Mm-hmm.
13:28Uske vare mein thoda sa bataiye and how, what was that reference about?
13:32The reference point was what Karthikian suggested in the trailer that we cannot allow it to become a Kennedy assassination case.
13:41Who's done it?
13:42We have to find, we have to find who's done it.
13:44You know?
13:45So it was basically mentioning that.
13:47And I think Kennedy assassination also happened a few years.
13:50When Kennedy assassination happened?
13:5263.
13:5363.
13:54So they did not want this to be a case where it's like the case is yet still open, right?
14:03They haven't been able to find who did it and how they did it.
14:06So I think it was majorly a reference to that, right?
14:08Correct.
14:09Absolutely.
14:10You were talking about the political aspects in the beginning, you know?
14:14And because there is nothing political about it, I have lost all of them.
14:18But then when you make a series or you make a show like this, agar ap chahe bhi na jahe,
14:23there are some elements, you know, that might create some, that might create some controversy.
14:29Correct.
14:30So how do you take care and how did you take care in this case?
14:34See, I have done it to the best of my ability.
14:37I have handled it with the utmost sensitivity.
14:41I have made sure that I steer clear.
14:44When the opportunity presented itself to do scenes that could have political implications, I stayed away from that.
14:51I have done everything.
14:52But we live in a time where people can generate a controversy out of anything, right?
14:57So that's the reality of the situation we are in.
15:00I hope it doesn't happen.
15:02But it's the nature of the beast.
15:05So let's see what happens from our side.
15:08I have done everything to not include that.
15:11Amit sir, as you said, obviously you spoke about the director and the book and all the references.
15:16I think if I ask your input for the character and for the entire show, what was your way from?
15:23Fortunately, unfortunately, it wasn't my input.
15:27It wasn't possible.
15:29Because I'm following the lead of a real life character, right?
15:33And I had to be, I had to have this utmost responsibility towards being absolutely honest and true to the living person.
15:44And the true incident that happened.
15:48So again, I mentioned that it all stemmed out from the little bit of research that I did on Kartik and Saab.
15:55And the script and everything.
15:58And we tried to fill in the blanks.
16:01You know, if I said before and I said before, then I would have done something like that or said.
16:07You know, but that was all very well etched out in the script itself.
16:12So, I just had to be damn sure that I do not give any input of mine into this.
16:21And I guess that earlier, you know, there were, you know, kind of, you know, we used to hear that, okay, India mein jo hai, you know, filmmakers, they don't make, you know, real life, I mean, show or film made on incidents like real life incidents like West as like Hollywood or, you know, other countries.
16:41With this, with last few shows, I have seen things have changed a lot, you know, the way our filmmakers are making it and presenting it.
16:50Have you got any such comment?
16:52And like, mein general baat kariyung.
16:54So, do you also see a change in last 10 years, the way real life assassination cases, real life incidents have been made into movies and the way they are treated?
17:03Well, I guess we are going through a phase now where such stories are being welcomed.
17:10These things happen only when people make it and it finds an audience.
17:15If it doesn't find an audience, trust me, in just a few years, this would have all fizzled out.
17:21But it is finding an audience.
17:23So, people are delving more into our own history and retelling incidents.
17:27So, that is a good thing.
17:30We'll see where this goes.
17:32It truly depends on whether we have an audience or not.
Be the first to comment