Time is at the centre of ZEE5’s upcoming crime-thriller series, Gyaarah Gyaarah. Spread across three timelines, it features a young cop, played by Raghav Juyal, working on a 15-year-old unsolved mystery, which sends him and his senior (Kritika Kamra) on a puzzling investigation. Things take an intriguing turn when a cop from the 1990s, played by Dhairya Karwa, connects to Raghav’s character through a walkie-talkie. Past meets present to predict the future. Much like the series, Kritika and Raghav had certain defining moments in their own past, which made them want to be in films.
In Kritika’s case, she chanced upon the opportunity. “Wanting to become an actor was too far-fetched for me. You can’t sit in a village and think that you’ll go into films. It’s not a viable career option,” she says. It was when she was studying at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Delhi that an opportunity came by. She was asked to audition for a role, which she eventually got.
Even then, she just took a few days leave for the shoot and resumed her college afterwards. However, time had another story to tell. “I vividly remember the first day I stepped on the set. It was surreal. That day, I decided I wanted to live in this world.” For Raghav, it was when he watched Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur (2012).
“At first, I just wanted to be an actor and say filmy dialogues. But when I saw Gangs of Wasseypur, I realised how naturally and organically the actors were behaving. It looked so easy and effortless,” he says. Raghav started out as a contestant in the dance reality show, Dance India Dance Season 3 (2009) and got into hosting Dance Plus in 2016.
Although he had already made his Hindi film debut with Sonali Cable in 2014, he started feeling that a certain perception had been built around him; that he is a TV personality. He wanted to change that image and work his way up to be an actor. “It is very difficult to break your stereotype. It was a difficult decision to leave the show,” he says.
Looking back, he feels that hosting became too comfortable for him. On how films are wildly different from the complacent warmth of working in television shows, he says, “I wanted to act in films because there is always a risk involved in it. Every audition is like a new challenge. It is like that feeling you have in the stomach while bungee jumping.
Nothing is monotonous. Every day I get to discover new facets of my own life while preparing for a character.” Dhairya had earlier essayed the role of an army man in Aditya Dhar’s URI: The Surgical Strike (2019) and finds it a big responsibility to wear the uniform on-screen. “There’s a sense of pride when you put on a uniform; it changes your posture and body language,” he says.
“I felt that in URI and even when playing the cop in Gyaarah Gyaarah. It’s very easy to generalise a ‘man-in-uniform’, but they are humans after all.” His acting process involves understanding the vision of the director and the writers in order to serve the narrative better. “Ultimately, it’s a director’s medium; you are a cog in his wheel,” he says.
Director Umesh Bist found himself in a fortunate position to receive all the creative freedom to explore the philosophical themes of time in the series. “I was lucky to work on a story which was already different from the usual crime thrillers. There is that whole element of time which made it so unique,” he says.
“So, when we developed the screenplay, there was this challenge of blending mysticism and mystery to create a universe, which is familiar and yet different.” He credits his producers, Karan Johar (Dharmatic Entertainment) and Guneet Monga (Sikhya Entertainment), for believing in him. “A creative person needs a little protection. We don’t understand business affairs as much.
And if someone starts giving gyaan and meddling in our affairs, it becomes a little difficult,” says the filmmaker, who earlier directed the 2021 comedy-drama, Pagglait. Umesh also feels that making films is like creating images which don’t exist in reality. “As filmmakers, we don’t make a tangible thing that can be touched physically,” he says. “ We sell dreams, which is always difficult. So, if you get a good producer, it becomes easier.”
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