Actor Anil Kapoor is sitting on a bare table inside a prison. Rowdy inmates are chanting around him but their words are reduced to indecipherable hollering. A bead of sweat trickles down the part of his face that’s lit by a naked light bulb. The air is thick with tension.
And, director Rensil D’Silva shouts ‘cut’.
It is always fun to visit a film or a television set because the first few minutes always feel very surreal. Inside the mostly-defunct Tulip Hotel (the erstwhile Juhu Centaur), art director Saini Johray has converted the basement parking lot into an underground jail in Pune for the second season of 24 .
Back to the sets
A little less than three years after the Indian audience first saw Kapoor as Jai Singh Rathod, the actor is back as the Anti-Terrorism Unit Officer in mid-July this year. An adaptation of the eponymous American thriller that had Keifer Sutherland playing the lead protagonist Jack Bauer, the desi version of the show follows the same format. During a seemingly never-ending day in the life of Rathod, he has to foil a bid to disturb peace in the country, while the clock continues to tick ominously.
In the first season of 24 , Rathod thwarted a conspiracy to kill the country’s PM-to-be. The show featured an impressive line-up of actors that included Anupam Kher, Shabana Azmi, Mandira Bedi, Tisca Chopra and Anita Raaj. The cast and crew have been very tight-lipped about the crisis Rathod will face in the middle of this year, though both D’Silva and Kapoor promise ‘the stakes will be higher than the first season’.
While series regulars Tisca Chopra and Sapna Pabbi return as Rathod’s wife and daughter, 24 has many new faces this year. Joining the cast are Sakshi Tanwar, Surveen Chawla, Sikander Kher, Madhurima Tuli and Ashish Vidyarthi. “Casting this year has been pitch perfect. We have some fresh faces from Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi theatre,” D’Silva says.
The show will be helmed by Abhinay Deo and Rensil D’Silva, both of whom were also involved with the earlier season.
In what is supposed to be the solitary section of a jail ‘for the worst criminals’, it’s now break time. Extras in prisoner outfits are lounging, gossiping or getting much-needed nicotine into their systems. Tulip Star has been quite the favourite of the series. In Season One, one of the hotel’s suites was used as the PM’s office; traces of the wallpaper from the first season are still visible near the elevators.
As the next shot is set up, Kapoor sits behind the monitor and Vidyarthi prepares for his big scene. In the show, the 53-year-old National Award-winning actor plays the main antagonist, Roshan Sherchand. “Sherchand has done something really heinous and he is sentenced to be hanged. This is where this season of 24 starts,” explains Vidyarthi after his take.
We sit in his trailer, for a quick cup of green tea, in between shots. With 24 , Vidyarthi makes his return to television after almost two decades. “Apart from my character, what got me interested in 24 was the sheer scale and detailing of the show,” he says. “Every tiny detail is critical to how the plot progresses. It is an infinite series, so nothing is stretched beyond reason and there is a lot of clarity on how characters are approached. No character is a hundred per cent black or white. The writers have spent a lot of time fleshing out the characters.”
The desi Jack Bauer
Back on the set, Kapoor has wrapped up another scene. By now, he is drenched in sweat. “This is real sweat and not water spray,” he says with a laugh. The television series has been a passion project for Kapoor, who also co-produces the show. “Making this show makes me feel like I am back at the beginning of my career. The drive to excel is the same. We shoot every episode of 24 like a film. I started preparing physically about a year ago. I am fitter than I was in the first season,” he says.
Action has been one of the highlights of the show. The day before I visited the set, they had shot a high-octane action sequence in the jail that involved a fire and a blast. The adrenaline rush of the previous day had given way to satisfaction at having pulled off the crucial scene. “One of the things we heard the most after Season One, was about the action sequences. Our audience had not seen action like this on the small screen. So, we were very conscious that we’d want the action on this season to be bigger and better,” D’Silva says, while he is in the middle of a head massage.
It’s lunchtime and while everyone is chowing down, the director is getting his shoulder muscles kneaded into submission on Vidyarthi’s recommendation. “He is very good,” D’Silva says, pointing towards the scrawny masseur standing behind him. Nothing-is-as-it-seems is a recurring theme in the make-believe world of films and television and no one knows this better than D’Silva. It took the art team almost three weeks to convert the parking lot into a prison. Johray personally made the cobwebs hanging off every other corner to ‘give the jail an old and decrepit look’.
As I am leaving, the lunch break is over and Kapoor is on his mark for his next scene. Just before D’Silva shouts “action!” Kapoor’s make-up dada sprays his face with a mist. And, just like that, Kapoor transforms into Rathod.
The author is a freelance writer
We have some fresh faces from Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi theatre
Rensil D’Silva
Director
