Hansal Mehta on comparisons between Scam 1992 and Scam 2003: 'When first season was such an unexpected success...'

Hansal Mehta shaked up the OTT landscape in India in 2020 with the biographical financial thriller series Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story. After three years, the second installment in the Scam franchise has been released as Scam 2003: The Telgi Story. While Mehta served as director in the first season headlined by Pratik Gandhi in an amazing performance, he has served as the showrunner for the second season which stars Gagan Dev Riar in the lead role.

In a recent interview with IndiaToday.in, the Shahid director opened up on the comparisons between the two seasons. He said, "It's bound to be there. Comparisons are inevitable. Especially when the first season was such an unprecedented and unexpected success. We have to take it in stride. If we look at the current comparisons and go or feel bad about it, it won’t be fair. Somebody says, 'This is good or it is not better than the first one'. Both of those comments are unfair, because this is a different story, narrated in a different way, with a new set of actors. Our job was to focus on the job at hand and to do it in the best way possible."

When he was asked about how did he cast Gagan Dev Riar as Abdul Karim Telgi in Scam 2003, Hansal shared that the actor was initially considered to play Sitaraman in the first season, which was eventually played by Jaimini Pathak. He added, "When we were developing Telgi and I told Mukesh Chhabra, 'we have found our Telgi', Mukesh auditioned Gagan immediately but he was not happy with his first audition. So, he did another and that sort of sealed it. He is such a find."

The first five episode of Scam 2003 have been released on SonyLIV on September 1. The release date of rest of the five episodes haven't been announced yet by the streaming platform.

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