After the critiques of Mumbai Diaries’ first season poured in, showrunner-creator Nikkhil Advani sat with Aparna Purohit, head of India originals, Amazon Prime Video, and meticulously went by the suggestions. The target was easy: work out what had labored, what hadn’t and what wanted to be performed going ahead. The result’s the Mohit Raina and Konkona Sen Sharma-led second season that revisits the 2005 Mumbai floods. Advani begins, “We discovered the time period 26/11 [on which the first season was centred] was triggering for folks. It [was a subject] many individuals didn’t wish to revisit. Plus, there weren’t sufficient cliffhangers. However what actually labored was that the present was a well-put collectively ensemble [drama]. Each character had stayed with the viewers. The manufacturing design, medical jargon, and [treatment] labored.”
Nikkhil Advani
Earlier than the workforce started writing the second version, Advani knew that each episode wanted a cliffhanger. “This time each episode has a excessive ending,” he says. As well as, they wanted extra of what they’d performed proper the final time round— construct memorable characters by which urgent points may be highlighted. “The second season’s theme is abuse—of infrastructure, media, energy, and even in interpersonal relationships. Home and sexual abuse grew to become important to reflect what we had in thoughts. We spent days gazing statistics [that said] 80 per cent of girls have confronted abuse in a public place. Chitra [Sen Sharma’s character] is the power of the hospital, however she is turning into a home violence sufferer once more. I needed to indicate how even robust girls miss [the signs] when they’re gaslit.”
Parambrata Chatterjee was an fascinating option to play Chitra’s ex. By way of his character of a soft-spoken, sort and good physician, Advani needed to indicate how even seemingly innocent folks may be predators. “I may very well be standing in a room full of individuals, and each man there may presumably be a predator. Param was probably the most affable man to forged for this. One other facet that labored was that Param and Konkona have labored collectively so much. We would have liked to take the character locations the place she needed to be alone with the actor, and it’s a darkish topic. So, she needed to belief her co-actor. After I urged Param, she immediately [agreed]. There may be an unbelievable scene within the fifth episode, which I may have solely pulled off with these two actors.”