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Nikkhil Advani has seen Bollywood’s progressive arc. From the making of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai where he served as an associate director to directing the unforgettable and endlessly quotable Kal Ho Naa Ho, he witnessed the shift in cinema and went with the tumultuous flow. His foray into the OTT space has been equally rewarding with Rocket Boys on which he served as creator bagging an Emmy nomination. In a world where everything including the way we make movies has changed, Advani finds himself nostalgic for the honesty that classic Bollywood films championed. After the release of his latest show, Mumbai Diaries Season 2, the filmmaker opened up about his hits and misses and more.
Why do you think people are fascinated by shows and films about disasters?
It’s not so much about the disaster. It’s about the victory from the disaster. When season one of Mumbai Diaries came out, there was a great comment that said, it’s not about heroes, it’s about survivors, the city is about survivors. Lots of people survive in season two, but lots of people don’t. We want to see heroic stuff happening. We consider ourselves not to be big heroes in real life, right? And we manifest ourselves in what they are going through. And so if those guys are going through the same problems as you, you are engaged. Somebody’s being beaten up at home. Somebody is having an issue with identity. Somebody is unable to muster the courage to ask a girl out. If we can just elevate those problems into something engaging, I think that resonates with lots of people.
When you’re making a show about a disaster, is the behind-the-scenes also a bit of a disaster?
The second season is about the Mumbai floods. None of us have worked on water. So everything was new. I sent the first draft of the script to Konkona. And Konkona is lovely. She’ll not tell you what the problem is, she’ll wait for you to say that there is a problem. She said, “Does it have the same amount of jeopardy as season one?” So I said, “Oh, okay. That means you’re asking me to put more jeopardy.” Then I went back and we were in draft two where we brought in a lot of water. And she turned around and said, “I don’t know how to swim.” So we had to figure out how to do those big, complicated action sequences all in the water with Konkona not knowing how to swim. Covid-19 was also a big challenge. We planned a schedule starting in March and then it’ll start raining in Mumbai in June and we’ll get the floods. And then it doesn’t rain. Nature plays its game and we don’t have rain. So now what do we do? I’m on the board of the Sanctioned Nature Foundation. So I’m saying we can’t be wasting water. Recycling means filtration. Filtration means money. Pumps are being put in and filters are being put in. There’s a scene where Tina gets stuck in a car. I want to do everything as real as possible. So I said we have to submerge the car but that’s dangerous. So we had to create trap doors just in case something went wrong and the underwater cameraman who’s actually a scuba diver and a scuba instructor was inside the car. If something went wrong, there’d be a signal to pull off the trapdoor, the car would be pulled up immediately. Nothing happened but these are the things that one has to think about. Even when the railway bridge collapses in a scene, I said, but why can’t we just drop the bridge? Just drop it. We’ll let it fall. So yeah, lots of fun.
Mumbai Diaries has so much tension in every frame. What goes into building that?
A big standing ovation should be given to Malay Prakash who was the DOP and Priya Suhas who was the production designer and the writers as well. They basically understood that tension is everything. Malay myself made it as claustrophobic as possible, so one can’t breathe. The lighting is also grey and dull because it was raining outside and all the sets had rain constantly coming down. Everybody was on their toes as far as performance was concerned. In the sound design, there’s this constant sound of the rain for background music and a humming sound that something is going to happen, it’s constantly building.
What are some of the discussions you had with Konkona Sen Sharma and Mohit Raina going into Mumbai Diaries Season 2?
As far as Konkona’s character is concerned, I had already promised her that in season two, I would make her front and centre. I’d already told her what we were going to do with her and that there would be talk about domestic violence. Season two is about abuse – infrastructural abuse, abuse of power, abuse of the media, domestic abuse and sexual abuse. Mohit’s character evolved because I think Kaushik Oberoi became such a superhero in season 1. I felt the need to humanise him, bring him down as a human being, make him a little more fractured, broken, et cetera. The logline of the show has always been those who are meant to heal are the most broken. So Mohit’s reaction was, “Everybody expects me to be a superhero. For four episodes, I’m not doing anything.” So I said, “Relax, it’ll happen. Don’t worry.” There were interesting conversations.
Your show Rocket Boys has an Emmy nomination. Do you think Indian OTT shows are getting enough recognition globally?
Not enough. I think if you allow some of the showrunners out there to really push the envelope we will be global players to another level. It’s encouraging that there are lots of stories that are getting made, but there are some stories that are not getting made.
What are the kinds of shows you want to see getting made?
I want to see more of Panchayat. I want to see stuff like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. I want to see a really good show set in a newsroom. There must be a constant tussle between the truth and what is being manufactured in newsrooms all over this country today. If somebody can allow us to make a show like that. I want to see a political satire. I want to see a show like Afterlife. What incredible writing.
There is so much talk about a Kal Ho Naa Ho remake. What is your stance on remaking iconic movies?
Remakes have been a staple and now thanks to social media, we know that certain things are remakes. But we’ve been doing it constantly, picking up an interesting subject from some form of regional cinema and making it in Hindi or vice versa. The conversation around Kal Ho Naa Ho as a possible remake has become trendy because we are in the 20th year of Kal Ho Naa Ho. But I’ve never thought about it, not once. There’s a lot of stuff that I would like to reshoot. Like It’s the Time to Disco. I think that we were so tired. We had all come back from a hard schedule in New York and we jumped into the song. We could have done better with that song, for sure.
So many iconic Bollywood movies are re-releasing in theatres. Why do you think films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai have stood the test of time?
Honesty. Just plain honesty. We all manipulate drama, emotion, and characters to do what we want them to do, to tell the story we want them to tell. But I don’t think it was ever done in keeping with a Friday number or a Saturday number or a Sunday number. It was always done with the purpose of the story progression. Karan recently said Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was his most fearless movie and I agree. I was there standing shoulder to shoulder with him. And he really was fearless.
Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani did some course corrections. Have you considered doing a woke version of any of your previous films?
Just imagine if I made Kal Ho Naa Ho and left the dialogue “6 Din ladki in,” what would you say? What would you say if two men are sitting on one hospital bed and one is saying he is not going to be able to get up and she’s standing in the corridor, my God? My daughter is 17 years old. Having said that, I don’t know how it has stood the test of time, it’s aged like a good bottle of wine. The world has changed a lot. And there are so many more stories that we need to tell. And there are so many different, so many other characters that we can, you know, talk about and issues that we can talk about. What we were saying 20 years ago and 25 years ago is different. Love is different between 2003 to 2023.
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