Published: August 23, 2020 6:58:05 AM
Atul Sabharwal’s class of ’83 streaming on Netflix.
Director Atul Sabharwal, ‘83 of class ’, reveals that of all the actors he approached, it was only Bobby Deol in sync with the emotion of the script. This gave him the confidence to cast the actor in the lead role of Dean Vijay Singh in the Netflix movie. The production of Red Chillies Entertainment marks the digital debut of Bobby.
Class of ’83 is adapted from Hussain Zaidi’s book Class of ’83: The Punishers of Mumbai Police. Set in the 1980s, the film revolves around cop Vijay Singh, who receives a criminal sentence as the dean of a police academy. Together with his classes, he trains a secret squad of young policemen to kill members of a crime that is apparently dangerous for Bombay.
Also starring Anup Soni, Joy Sengupta and Vishwajeet Pradhan, along with newcomers Bhupendra Jadawat, Hitesh Bhojraj, Sameer Paranjape, Ninad Mahajani and Prithvik Pratap, the class of 83 is currently streaming on Netflix.
In an exclusive interview with indianexpress.com, Atul Sabharwal got honesty about the casting process and the 80s on screen again.
Here are excerpts from the interview:
Q. How challenging does it become to capture a certain amount of time on screen?
Very challenging depending on the resources you have. Apart from the character of Vijay Singh, who was the first one I fell in love with, my main attraction to Class of ’83 was also the charm of making the period in which I kind of grew up in – the ’80s. That it was challenging, but also so fun that it never hit like a challenge. It was rather an opportunity to live through this experience. And of course, we had a very understandable production house in Red Chillies and very good technicians to remake it.
Q. The movie has Bobby Deol in a whole new avatar. How did it get him on board?
We thought of everyone who was within that age group and we went to everyone. But sometimes when you get feedback from an actor, you realize who is most in sync with the emotion of the script, who wants to change nothing in it. It was only Bobby who gave us that confidence that he would like to do it as it is written without changing anything. When he talked to me, I could see that in the years he has spent in this sector, most of these emotions have passed on. Of course, he is also a father of two teenage children. That, he is in that age and frame of mind. When we had that interaction, it cemented in my head that he is the best choice among those available to us.
F. The film also has a whole bunch of newcomers – Bhupendra Jadawat, Hitesh Bhojraj, Sameer Paranjape, Ninad Mahajani and Prithvik Pratap, apart from other actors. Take me through their casting process.
The casting of actors like Annup Sonii and everyone else was based on the screen test they gave. But casting the cadets was something that gave me nightmares from the beginning. More than the fact that it’s a period film, the fact that if these five go wrong, the whole movie would go wrong. That was what I and Abhimanyu Ray, the casting director, were aware of.
We tested people not only individually, but in a group of fives, and we kept rotating them until we were 15 on the shortlist. We have not assigned a single part to one actor. They test and read for all characters. That there were a lot of elimination rounds. Ultimately, this is the group of five that emerged from those 15 actors on the shortlist. Sometimes it is not only the acting talent but also the chemistry that an actor can create as a couple, or as a group of friends, that becomes important. And these five boys stood out.
Read: Bobby Deol: Looking back, the only cop I can remember playing was Vijay Singh in 83rd grade.
Q. Give me five reasons to look at Class of ’83.
See it for the Bombay that will never be what it used to be. Watch it for Bobby Deol. Look at it for the great story and ideology that it represents from the cops of that era, and see it because I made it.
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