Lara Dutta’s Bollywood comeback this year Bell Bottom caught the eye of viewers with her transformation as former India's Prime Minister, the late Indira Gandhi. And the actress will once again surprise the viewers with her playing a 40-plus single woman looking for casual relationship in the new show, Hiccups and Hookups. When the show director Kunal Kohli approached Dutta, he told her that he wants to make the story of a 40-plus single mother looking for dating again and the actress jumped at the opportunity which she feels most mainstream actresses would never attempt. “Kunal said that we do not want to show how society dictates single mothers, divorcees or separated women. Society will allow such women to get married, but if they want to go into a casual relationship then it is a big taboo. I found this topic and its casting quite interesting.
Today a lot of content on OTT is very dark, gritty and edgy. They could have picked up subjects that appeal to younger audiences but I was really blown away with the fact that they had picked up a story that was following the trials of a 40 - plus single woman and addressing a lot of issues that are very relevant in her life. The show that premieres on Lionsgate Play on 26 November, aims to show intimate conversations and sexual encounters in a modern no-filter family.
Even as Dutta was all excited headlining the project which is touted to be a refreshing and non-conformist brother-sister (played by Dutta and Prateik Babbar) relationship, who openly discussed their 'sexcapades', she had some reservations which she sorted out with Kohli right in the beginning. “I was concerned about how certain scenes and situations would be handled. There is a hesitation as to whether it is too bold. But I don’t think there are a lot of mainstream female actors who would be comfortable doing something like this on screen because everybody is too worried about their image. Thankfully I have a very strong support system back home and I always first wanted to be an actor and that is what I am. It is a very big part of my identity of who I am. The character may have required me to step out of my comfort zone a little but if I don’t step out of my comfort zone at 40 when will I be doing that? It took a certain amount of input from my end with the makers to make sure that things will be shot keeping in mind my sensibilities the way that I wanted to be perceived without the feeling of getting exploited,” she says.
Meanwhile, Kohli was left wondering when people called the show too bold. “People even said that they didn’t expect this kind of content from me and I have been wondering what I have done. Hiccups and Hookups is not some sex show, it is about human emotions, interactions... Don’t over expect. It is funny, it is not a sex show based just on hook-ups, it is so much before and after the hook-ups. It is all the different dynamics with mother and daughter at 40 and 18 are just getting into the dating world. The mother has become a single woman again and she wants to date again.
Earlier there was no tinder or other dating sites. Then there is the brother, the young girl’s uncle who runs this dating app, he has been a player all his life to the extent where he rigs the algorithm of his app to suit himself so that he gets all the hot chicks. He finally falls in love, or his smitten, or is thinking that he is in love with this girl who doesn’t believe in being with one person and wants to be in an open relationship. So now he is finding the taste of his own medicine. All three are messed up in some way or the other. That is the fun of the show,” said Kohli. The show is an adaptation of the US show Casual and the director says he has taken a lot of plot points from there.
“There are a lot of characters which are new and there are a lot of plot points which are different. So we have got a mix and match of both. We have put our tadka and Indian flavour,” he says.
Babbar says he had a whale of a time shooting for the show. His character, the CEO of a dating app, enjoys romance but is not willing to be tied down. “I was pleasantly surprised when I was told that I will be directed by Kunal Kohli and my co-star would be Lara Dutta, and with a great script and character it was double whammy for me. It was an absolute breeze working on this show even though there were a lot of dialogues and a lot of scenes. But we had the best time on the set. None of us felt we were working, everybody was having fun. Kunal just let us be. It was like we were thrown into this massive playground and let us do what we wanted.
Lara brought a lot on the table and it was so easy to reciprocate. My character Akhil was a lot of fun to play. He is an entrepreneur who struck gold with his start-up and wants to engage in relationships which don’t come with the permanence tag. We had great material to play with, the dialogues, the scenes. I could totally relate being the cool uncle who would help her niece to do some fun stuff that she was not allowed to do,” says Babbar.
"Both Prateik and I were very clear about how we wanted to play Vasu and Akhil. We had gotten under the skin of our characters and that is how when Vasu and Akhil met each other on set to create that chemistry of brother and sister was effortless. It actually happened very organically. We never had to manipulate the scene to create that kind of chemistry. As an actor, yes, I loved to play off what energy Prateik brought. He was able to pick up very quickly to comic timing, to dialogue delivery that I was throwing his way. This kind of relationship between brother and sister hasn’t been explored in the past where they are also best friends. We have seen those protective older brothers, the rakhi types...it is only that way the sibling relationship has been explored. The male is always kind of a little bit aggressive in this relationship," adds Dutta.
Talking about his shooting process, Kohli says, he let his actors let go. “After a point in life when you have matured a bit with certain experiences we become comfortable. We don’t want to prove to anybody and you let go and then we see what we have got to the table. When you have newly become an actor or director, you show off your shot taking and your performance, all that was not there on this set. At some places Prateik would tell me that he was doing something wrong and I would tell him that it looked loveable when he did it. He is moophat, there is no filter and that is what we liked about the character. We kept that openness so that you have space to move around. I used to tell the DOP, ‘Don’t bind the actors, change the lighting. Don’t time my actors, let them breathe, let them be free’. I didn’t want to restrict my actors because then there is no fun. It is like Yashji (Chopra) telling Amitabh Bachchan in that scene in Deewar where the actor is ‘talking’ to 'god', ‘Don’t move too much, stand in one place and speak...’ So I just let them fly,” says Kohli.
Kohli, who has directed Bollywood hits like Hum Tum and Fanaa, says he likes moving with the times, and his aim is to tell good stories rather than worry about big or the small screen. “I love telling stories about relationships and that is what gets me going. I love relationships with complexities.
The scale of this show looks big and one of my producer friends was telling me it is a rich big show, has a lot of scale, it is shot well, costumes look great and that it looks like a big film.
I feel there is no point in saying something nicely if it is not making sense. All the big screen, gloss and glamour, all the shooting, costumes, nothing matters, it is the content that matters,” says the director. Incidentally, Dutta and Kohli had earlier collaborated on Fanaa but the actress had a very brief, one scene role and she had played Aamir Khan’s ex-girlfriend in the 2006-release film.
Playing the lead who is 40 plus on screen is an empowering feeling, says Dutta. “There are many layers to my character Vasudha and she is highly relatable because of the kind of situations and scenarios she finds herself in. I am keen to see how the viewers will react to our show,” she says. Besides Lara Dutta, Prateik Babbar and Shinnova in lead roles, the show which is Lionsgate Play’s first original series, features Divya Seth, Nassar Abdullah, Khalid Siddiqui, Meiyang Chang, Meera Chopra and Ayn Zoya.
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