Filmmaker duo Raj & DK have a busy 2023 up ahead. They have as many as three huge web series lined up and are kicking off the year with Farzi, the OTT debut of Shahid Kapoor and Vijay Sethupathi. The filmmakers sat down with DNA for an exclusive chat about the show, their lead stars, and the glamourisation of crime in cinema.
Farzi is a rare India show that throws light into the world of counterfeiting. How did the idea for the show develop?
Raj: Most of our ideas take a while. There is an idea and it sits in our head where it develops. When it’s the right time, we start making it. It’s been there for more than 8 years. The Family Man was there for around 10 years. They take that long, and there are quite a few of these. It began when we started reading about counterfeiting and realized that it’s a faceless crime. There hasn’t been anything about it ever. It was fascinating to us. This was never talked about and it has had a major impact on the country and the economy.
DK: It is also a crime that goes hand in hand with art. It’s a very special and specific crime. Not any of us can be a counterfeiter. A lot of things need to come together and that is how the characters started forming themselves.
When you take a story where your protagonist is doing something against the law, how do you find the balance of making them likable and yet not promoting or glamourising crime?
DK: That is an important job. That is why in this kind of story, you do have that juxtaposition with characters like his grandfather, his friends. They are people around our protagonist who always form the moral compass. Our hero is a flawed person. Somewhere, we subconsciously want him to succeed but we also need to acknowledge that while we like him what he is doing is wrong. That is something that is very clear.
I had read that it was Shahid who approached you for Farzi and not the other way around. Is that true?
Raj: We had a draft when we were talking about another film with Shahid. We met him and we were discussing that. And he mentioned, how about a series. We asked him if he was sure he wanted to do a series and he said he really wanted to do one. He said that is where as an actor I can do a lot more. We already knew in our heads what that story will be and that he will really like it. So, it was an easy process. We told him the idea and he was on board.
DK: He is one of the first stars, literally the first star to want to get on to the web series world before it was cool.
And then you have Vijay Sethupathi playing the cop to Shahid’s criminal. With Farzi and two Bollywood films, he will be truly seen by mainstream Hindi audiences this year.
Raj: They are going to love him. We really wanted him. As soon as we realized that he could speak even a bit of Hindi, that was it. Then, we were just hoping he would jump in and take up the character, which he did. He said I always wanted to play this role because I have never gotten to play this specific thing. And he had that in mind. He quoted other films where he played the opposite of it. He specifically mentioned Vikram Vedha.
When you make a show where the narrative involved two characters pitted against each other, how do you refrain from favouring one over the other in your depiction? How do you achieve that impartiality?
Raj: The story really is not one versus the other, I feel. That format, structure would fit a feature better. It’s really their stories separately. Of course, they cross paths and interact but there is no favouring someone. So far, no actor has come up and said give me a really cool her introduction shot or give me a song. They know we won’t. So, we don’t have to worry about that.
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Your shows – be it The Family Man of Farzi – have always had actors from across the country. It was Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Manoj Bajpayee there and Vijay Sethupathi and Shahid Kapoor here. Many would say it has that pan-India appeal that many films go for these days.
DK: We started doing this with The Family Man for all the right reasons. We didn’t use the word pan-India, but somewhere we decided that since this will play all over the country and the story spans from Kochi to Kashmir, let’s cast actors from where the characters are. What it did for us was it opened up the world to choose from. It’s a good opportunity that instead of choosing from these 100 actors, we had a pool of thousand actors.
Farzi, which also stars Kay Kay Menon, Raashi Khanna, and Regina Cassandra, will begin streaming on Prime Video from February 10.
