Actors Sunny Kaushal and newcomer Sharvari will be seen in Kabir Khan’s web series directorial debut The Forgotten Army. Amazon Prime Video’s original series is the story of the Indian National Army headed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and how they fought for India’s independence.
The Quint spoke to the actors of The Forgotten Army about their experience of shooting for the same.
What about the script hooked on to the two of you?
Sunny: What about the script? The whole script. It was a story that was begging to be told.
Sharvari: The female character was written so strongly. The minute I read, I was like, I have to do it. So basically, what has been done is the three faces of Azad Hind Fauj, Dhillon sir, Shahnawaz sir, and Sehgal sir, have been merged into one character. So what you see in the series are all real events that happened with them but have been amalgamated into one character.
What was it like working with Kabir Khan?
Sharvari: His storytelling is so honest that you fall in love with the honesty he has about the story and his characters. He just made us fall in love with the story that he has written.
When you decided to become an actor, did you feel like you will be compared with your brother?
Sunny: Vicky and I have just a difference of one and a half years. So when you are that close, so there are always comparisons. Whether you are in the building, in school, at a cultural function. It’s a part of life, you don’t have to be prepared for it. You don’t pay attention to it, you don’t get affected by it.
In your stand up you very interestingly made it about nepotism. You have said in your interviews that your father told you very early on that he can’t help.
Sunny: So the reason why I made a joke about nepotism is that it doesn’t exist in my life but still, it’s labelled like that. So I was like, let’s make a joke about it. Because if people are thinking that it’s because of dad or Vicky that I am in the industry, so let’s make a joke about it because I am actually not. After college, I decided to assist on a film to see whether this line of work interests me and then I decided to give acting a shot and see where it takes me.
And both of you have also done theatre. So how different do you think being in front of the camera and in theatre is?
Sunny: It is contrastingly different. Theatre is an actor’s medium and film is a director’s medium.In theatre, you know you have rehearsed and when you go on the stage, it’s all on you. When you are there, no director can come and tell you. If you fumble, if you make a mistake then you have to carry that forward. In films, there’s action and cut, the shoot in jumbled up. You’re sometimes shooting the climax first and the starting of the film later.
Sharvari: I mean you also do a single dialogue so many times. In theatre, you probably just do it once.
How did you guys involve yourselves in the character because I am sure that must have taken some understanding of where they are coming from?
Sharvari: So I think Kabir sir made this documentary in 1999. So I think mostly our references came from there because we actually heard these people talk about their experiences. So it was very easy for us to know what went behind their lives you know. When you are talking about scale, it was so massive that we would enter and we would feel like this is not a set. We’re really in Singapore or we’re really in Burma because it was that good and it was that massive.
Sunny: And there were some real locations where I would never go. If I go on holiday, these places will never be on my list. Because you have to trek uphill for an hour. Every day we would trek for an hour and shoot in the rain and blast fans and muck and everything.
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