“Ozark” answers Shibani Akhtar when asked about her favourite drug drama. Her first show as a creator, Dabba Cartel, seems to have one similarity with the American crime show: ordinary people in extraordinary (also dangerous) situations. A pan-Indian cast of Shabana Azmi, Jyotika, Shalini Pandey, Anjali Anand and Nimisha Sajayan team up to cook more than just food in this thriller series, which also stars Sai Tamhankar, Jisshu Sengupta, Lillete Dubey and Gajraj Rao, among others.
Shibani, along with husband and producer Farhan Akhtar, director Hitesh Bhatia and Netflix India content VP Monika Shergill, talk about how the idea for the show shaped up, what does the female gaze bring to the male-inundated crime genre and what do the Akhtars discuss at the dinner table.
Excerpts:
Shibani, what you have done here is, you have taken a quintessential Mumbai local thing which is the ‘Dabba’ and put it in the high-stakes world of a drug drama. Was this fusion that excited you?
Shibani Akhtar: We were clear about making a show about women in crime. We didn't necessarily know that they would be unsuspecting, unassuming middle-class women. This idea of middle-class women who aren’t part of the drug world and they suddenly find themselves in the middle of it, that was interesting. Moreover, you often don’t see many crime-shows with women at the helm.
That’s true, crime fiction has always been dominated by men, be it the makers or the protagonists. This makes me wonder, what does the female gaze bring to this genre?
SA: See, these female characters have to juggle their lives and their work. Each one of them has a different journey. What changes is what they feel, what they may be going through. They are suddenly thrust into this male-dominated world and they have to navigate it…
Hitesh Bhatia: I think more than the gender side of it, it is the story itself that reigns supreme over everything. The characters can be male or female, what is more fascinating is the situations they find themselves into and how they deal with them.
Farhan, were you the first one Shibani shared this idea with?
Farhan Akhtar: I hope so (laughs)
SA: He was actually the seventh (laughs)
Why?
SA: I don’t know. I felt very shy. This was very early on in our relationship and he comes in with this reputation of being a writer-director and I had never done anything like this before, so I mean, what do you say? ‘Here’s my script. Whether you hate it or not please tell me it’s amazing.’
Do the Akhtars discuss each other’s ideas at the dinner table?
FA: Sure, yes. Everybody is working on some film. So, at some point you end up asking how’s it going and then that discussion leads to talking about some other film. But that’s just the part and parcel of life.
SA: Let me put it this way, there is always an opinion. Nobody is afraid to share their thoughts and opinions. They aren’t diplomatic.
FA: Let’s just say diplomacy goes to die at that dinner table (laughs).
What was Javed Akhtar’s reaction when you first told him the idea?
SA: So, during the lockdown we had spent some time at Javed uncle’s Khandala home. Shabana (Azmi) knew we were working on something so she told him and he was like ‘So, tell me, what is this thing you are working on?’ and I was nervous but I still told him anyway. He heard it and pointed to Shabana, ‘Here’s your cast’ and till that time I had not told Shabana that I was thinking of casting her.
It's not just Shabana, the show has an ensemble cast of Jyotika, Shalini Pandey, Nimisha Sajayan, Lillete Dubey, Gajraj Rao, Jisshu Sengupta and Anjali Anand, among others. These are artists with different ranges of experience, Hitesh how did you go about handling them on set?
HB: I knew my approach couldn’t be the same with everyone. Everybody has different temperaments. Somebody like Shabana ji had a hundred questions about everything, you know like which shade of pink this character is wearing, etc. So, you need to prepare yourself well. Also, Shabana wants to read the script and rehearse again and again. Whereas somebody like Nimisha doesn’t want to rehearse. She doesn’t want to over-discuss anything. She wants to be more spontaneous.
Monika, Netflix seems to have a soft corner for crime shows. What was something that made you greenlit Dabba Cartel?
Monika Shergill: I would say crime is one of the genres Netflix is interested in (laughs). The most exciting thing for us was a partnership with Excel Entertainment (the production company run by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani). What interested me was that the show has multiple layers and well-crafted characters. It has two different worlds coming together: the lives of these everyday women and the male-dominated crime world. It honestly felt like a fascinating and layered dabba for me.
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