In Anubhav Sinha’s IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, Amrita Puri plays a journalist, Nandini Martin, who is caught in the complexities of covering an act of terrorism in real time. Nandini and the editor of her newspaper, Shalini (Dia Mirza), grapple with some pressing questions about the nature of truth. Amrita feels that she became part of the series out of pure luck.
One day, she got a call from casting director Mukesh Chhabra who told her about the project and gave her some scenes from the screenplay to read. “There was no audition that I had to give. I just read my scenes and loved the character arc,” she says.
The hijack-thriller also stars seasoned actors such as Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Arvind Swamy, Kumud Mishra, Vijay Varma, and Manoj Pahwa, among others. While Amrita doesn’t have scenes with them, she feels happy to be part of the multi-starrer. In the middle of everything, she found the relevance of her character to the story.
“If a film or series has such a big cast and there is so much happening in it, it’s not about how much time you have on screen, but more about what are you doing with it,” says the actor, whose credits also include Kai Po Che (2013), Aisha (2010) and Judgementall Hai Kya (2019).
She reveals feeling nervous to work with Anubhav as it was their first collaboration. It was Dia who comforted her during the scenes and asked her to focus on her lines. Anubhav had done readings with Dia and Amrita before the shooting started so that they could get into the dynamics of their scenes.
“He told us how he wants the relationship of the two characters to play out and how there’s a lot of mutual love, respect and playfulness between them. We had all worked it out together before shooting and then tried to play with it on set,” she said.
Amrita says that Anubhav also gave her a detailed backstory of her character, and she did some reading on the incident to understand it better. She also found his directions helpful in making her explore the character. “He gives you a lot to do. There is always something happening in his scenes and they are never static.
So, in my scenes, I am making some notes and also looking through the newspaper and then walking through a corridor,” she says. According to her, Anubhav also tries to keep the conversations organic. “It doesn’t have to be that I have to speak only when my co-actor finishes their line. In a way, Anubhav helped me set the tempo of my performance so as to not make it overdramatic. He did all the fine-tuning,” she concludes.
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