“With a show like this, we have the audience to speak for what they liked in season one and season two, our challenge was always to figure out, what do we do that is different dwhile we retain everything that’s important,and integral to Abhay, while creating another season,” Says Kunal
“Season three actually picks up exactly where season two ended. so there were these two hooks that we left season two with., those get unravelled here.
As a character, Abhay gets pushed into the corner, not just professionally, personally, but in a lot of ways also spiritually, because he’s also at the crossroad in his life. I think he’s also thinking of how long can he do this and how long can he handle all the pressure that comes with it.”
IN THE LONG FORMAT CONTENT, THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CHARACTER NEVER ENDS
When you create characters in the long format, the creative team and the writers have to face the challenge of keeping a character interesting and engaged.
The character is human at the end of the day and will have weaknesses woven into the story as the story progresses.
Adds Kunal, “I have really enjoyed playing this hugely enigmatic genius, but at the same time a flawed individual who’s trying to run fast while he picks himself up every time he falls and his strained relationship with his son and his role as a cop and as a father and as a person in the society and as a friend to certain people, all of that. “
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“And I just feel that the format in itself has allowed me as an actor to spend a lot more time with the character, understanding more and getting an opportunity to play different shades of him and unravel through different layers of his personality over a period of time, as opposed to just throw it in there.”, explains Kunal.
“So you have to answer all the questions, why is he behaving like this. Actually, we have been able to achieve that with season 3. Abhay here is so different from the Abhay that you’ve seen in Season one and Season two.”, he adds
AN ACTOR IS MERELY A SPARE PART
“Watching a show like 24 or Prison Break or The Wire., I realized that I got engrossed into the content and it changed the game because it wasn’t any of those actors that I had seen before.” says Kunal when asked about how web platforms had changed the game for actors
“It wasn’t made by any of the directors that I knew or read about or was a fan of, but it had the same effect, if not more on me as an audience. “
He Adds, ” And again, like the films in this space, also an actor is merely a spare part. If he falls into the right hands and the right story, then he can do great things with his talent. Otherwise he cannot be in control of everything. “
So luckily for me, in my first web project with Zee5 , I have been very lucky to find Abhay as a character and the show where the platform is invested in, believed in and got the right people to tell the right story.
“I’m very happy that as an actor I could bring what I wanted to bring to this character and they gave me a free hand with that, whether it was designing his look of how Abhay would look or how he would behave or how he would speak. And I’m very thankful to them to give me that space. “
