In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Firstpost’s Lachmi Deb Roy, Bhumi Satish Pednekar, Aditya Rawal, Samara Tijori, director Amrit Raj Gupta and creator Suresh Triveni talk about Prime Video’s show ‘Daldal’. Read and WATCH the full interview below.
Bhumi Pednekar took a short break after facing massive trolling for Netflix’s The Royals. Now she is happy to be back to her core that is her craft with Prime Video’s show Daldal. Bhumi Pednekar has always been a terrific performer. And not just her, there are two other brilliant actors in the show, Aditya Rawal and Samara Tijori. In a conversation with Firtpost, they spoke about their preparation for their roles in Daldal and more_._
Edited excerpts from the interview:
How much of
_Daldal_ (slush) are you all in?
Bhumi: Personally, for me, I’m a little faint hearted so I can’t deal with all the gore of being slashed and there is so much of that which is happening in the show. I’m a bit of a softy.
The show is inspired by a book Bhendi Bazaar which also must have been inspired by real incidents. Did that help in developing the characters?
Suresh Triveni: In the writers’ room, we discussed about it; but the script that reached them was what we worked on. There were a couple of characters that were not there in the book. The book was the base that we developed for the screen.
All the characters have a backstory and a very horrific and traumatic backstories; how did you all get into that character? Did it take time?
Samara Tijori: I read about it in general. I studied psychology so I wanted to pursue criminology. Besides the show, I had read quite a bit about this world. I have read the ‘Mindhunter’ book and I’ve also read a book written by the FBI as well on my own. So, when I got to audition for this part, I felt this was it. I tried to watch whatever little I could find about this woman called Aileen Wuornos (American serial killer). I had to create Anita, my character out of thin air since there wasn’t much examples. You don’t see many women do this. I even met a psychologist who I worked with.
My character has an extremely dramatic backstory. I had to dive into very deep aspects of myself to portray certain emotions. I didn’t know I had this in me and when I got the opportunity, I felt it somewhere healed me.
Bhumi, coming back to your part and the prep. Again, back to no make-up look after Netflix’s ‘The Royals’. How does it feel?
I think I wear enough makeup in my real life as everyone can see. So, I am very happy to go back to my core, which is my performance. The reason why I did Daldal was because I was getting the opportunity to play a hero who has all the anti-hero traits.
She has the ability to go and kill someone. She has a lot of violence, past trauma and most importantly suppressed trauma. She had a traumatic childhood and that’s pretty much the running theme of the show. How a fractured society can impact certain individuals. Rita, my character chose the righteous path but you never know when she’ll flip. It is an extremely engaging drama, but it also touches upon the themes that Indian shows usually don’t.
As far as the preparation for the character is concerned, I was coming out of a show that was very verbose. When you have a comedy, you have a lot of things to say, you have the crutch of dialogues. In Rita’s case, she literally has very few words. She’s very stoic and restrained, less is more. It was a very interesting journey for me because within my skill set, I had to find ways to communicate things that they had beautifully written. It was also a realisation that this is not an actor’s job alone. The one thing that I had in my mind about my character was claustrophobia. She is not likable at all and constantly pushing people away.
The beauty of the show is that by the end of it, you sympathise with the antagonists. We were in the same room for more than a month and a half, and we followed every beat. There were fights and disagreements. The few things that she says were also taken away from me. Like Samara said, there were criminal psychologists that we all worked with. An expert opinion was taken, even during the process of writing, which is very rare.
Aditya, how much did you relate to your character?
At some point, you have to find some things in the character that you can relate to. The journey was quite an eye opening. The joy of this profession is that you get to learn too many new things. The things I kind of latched on to was understanding the mindset of a drug addict. I really enjoyed the research aspect of it. There’s a guy called Bryan who has a rehab centre outside Mumbai; I met him, heard his story and met the people in his rehab centre. The way we treat addiction is not necessarily very good. There’s not too much empathy or sympathy for the addict.
WATCH the video interview here:
End of Article
I like how the venue suits both corporate and wedding functions.