Vikramaditya Motwane became a household name when Sacred Games, which he co-directed, was released on Netflix in 2018 as its first Indian original. It was a critical and commercial hit and set the bar high for subsequent Indian shows. His latest series, Jubilee, the first part of which released on April 7 on Amazon Prime Video to wide acclaim, is based on the golden era of Hindi cinema. The five-episode limited series describes the Bollywood studio system of the 1930s-40s, and the star power of its actors. Jubilee, starring Aparshakti Khurana, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Aditi Rao Hydari and Sidhant Gupta, is a gripping show with a layered narrative and multiple subplots set against a sepia-tinted backdrop. It traces the journey to stardom of a low-key studio worker, the ambitions of a studio owner and a sex worker's dream of making it in the cinema world.
How did you get the idea for Jubilee?
It started in 2013, when we were all sitting around at the office of Phantom Films (of which he is a partner along with Anurag Kashyap, Vikas Bahl and Madhu Mantena) and discussing the legacy of TV shows like Game of Thrones, Mad Men, House of Cards and Breaking Bad. We found that we were speaking more about these TV shows than about the movies that were being made. That made us wonder how it would be if we did a TV show about the golden age of the film industry in India. That idea snowballed into a pitch for the series. Amazon loved the pilot and then everything fell into place. The final product is better than what we visualised. It is now far more layered, with a well fleshed-out historical context, depth and detailing.
We can draw so many parallels with the real life stories of Bollywood from that era.
The show is partly urban legend, and partly fleshed from the stories we have heard—of how certain directors worked in the past or how a certain actor had to leave for a certain reason. So we took all these stories and distilled them into a narrative. Then started the documentation of the era—the geo-political situation, the conditions in the refugee camps soon after partition, the Russian-American influences.... [We recreated] the vehicles, the buildings, the facades, the music and the crowds. The design of Roy Talkies is a fictionalisation of what we believe was the biggest studio of that era—Bombay Talkies. We did not know what Bombay Talkies looked like, because there was nothing left of it for us to see. So this melting pot of fact and fiction has become a tribute to that era.
From Udaan (2010) and Lootera (2013) to Sacred Games and now Jubilee, can we describe your filmmaking as a mix of legacy and indie?
I don't think I have a signature style at all. Part of it is because I like to do something different every time. I think I am known for the lack of a signature style.
What was the most challenging part of shooting Jubilee?
The challenge was that when you come from a feature film background, you just don't get as much time when you are doing a series. So you have to have a set that works like clockwork to be able to maximise every minute of every day. As a director, you want to be ambitious and shoot five pages of dialogue every day, come what may. You have to balance your ambition with accomplishing a sense of artistry. I am describing a world which most people are not familiar with, especially the technicalities, like when Sumitra damages a negative by exposing it to the light. This generation has never even seen a negative. The challenge is finding a balance between storytelling and educating people. We have always tried to make it character first. The story, drama and everything else will follow, and that has worked for us.
The show's protagonist says that a mass hero should be a government mouthpiece. Is that true for the industry even today?
I think that has always been the case. At least that is how it looks like to me. It sort of extends into opportunities, too. It is not even about the narrative coming from a policy perspective. It becomes about it coming even from a general industry perspective. The industry prefers the majoritarian narrative, because it makes good business sense at the end of the day. So there is also an irony in that, in the show they say songs are a bad influence on the Indian culture. That will bring a smile to the viewer, to realise that so much still remains the same. Just a few months ago, there was a call for a song to be banned for insulting Indian culture.
Is this your finest directorial work till date?
Probably yes. I think it is my most accomplished project at this scale, with multiple characters and detailed writing. Also, I am not the same person I was 13 years ago. It is natural for me to grow as a director. Udaan was a film from my gut and that approach worked for it. Before Jubilee, I was very proud of my work in the action drama, Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (2018).
Casting has played a huge role in the success of the show. How did you choose the actors?
I did not hold auditions for Prosenjit Chatterjee, Ram Kapoor and Aditi Rao Hydari. We needed some established actors for the roles of Mr and Mrs Roy, and hence we got them onboard. But we held auditions for Aparshakti Khurana, Wamiqa Gabbi and Sidhant Gupta. We auditioned for everyone else, including the actor who plays the cobbler. Sidhant auditioned multiple times. Initially, I was not sure about Aparshakti for the role of Binod and I would not have said yes to his audition if the casting director had not shown conviction. But later, I was blown away by his audition. Again, I thought we could replace Wamiqa with somebody else, but then I saw her on Instagram and I was impressed by her wicked sense of humour. I then took a re-look at her audition and finalised her for the role.
Women in Jubilee play mostly supportive or subsidiary roles. Is that not a disservice to the women of Bollywood then?
In a sense yes, the two leads are Binod and Jay. But Sumitra Roy (Hydari) as the studio boss has agency and is powerful. She kind of triggers a lot of the stuff that happens and helps in taking the story forward. Nilofer (Wamiqa Gabbi) again is someone who does exactly what she wants, when she wants and how she wants. And so I think that even if the length of the women's roles in Jubilee may be shorter than that of the men, the portrayal of these characters is just as substantial, strong and meaningful.
The star system remains the same even today, right?
If you put it all in today's context, nothing really has changed. Everybody is always looking for a star. As the studio boss in Jubilee says, "Stars aise roz nahin milte.” Even today, if you take for instance Ranveer Singh's rise to stardom, he was launched in 2010 as a newcomer by Yash Raj Studios in a film produced by Aditya Chopra. So that has not changed. It is just the context that has changed. If you take partition out of the equation, everything remains the same. Somebody who bites the dust and rises to the top, or someone at the top trying to maintain control—nothing has changed from that perspective. There is a very grey area on whom you can call an actor and whom a star. But I believe that nobody can be a star without being an actor first. People have to fall in love with what you portray on screen and that takes a certain amount of acting talent. The hierarchy still remains in place—there have always been the A plus, the cream of the cream who would be able to command a lot more love. It was the same back then and the same right now.