You Haven’t Seen a Spy Like This: Manoj Bajpayee on The Family Man

The team of Amazon Prime’s latest show The Family Man - Manoj Bajpayee, Priyamani and Neeraj Madhav got candid in a conversation with The Quint about making the show, films in the south versus Bollywood, and more. Here are excerpts from the conversation:

So from what I see in the trailer, it’s about this spy who is juggling domestic duties. We’ve seen stuff with spies before, right – in Hollywood, Bollywood? What makes this different and what did you like about it?

Manoj Bajpayee: Did you see any middle class guy becoming a spy and he’s doing family work more than wielding a gun? No, you haven’t. So this is what makes it so different from the rest of the clutter that you see. Here is a spy who is not surrounded by girls, not carrying semi-automatic weapons, he is not wearing a suit, he’s dealing with his wife and two children, and dealing with a terrorist who doesn’t even speak.

Priyamani: Basically the character of Suchi is such that she sort of wears the pants in the house, she has kids on one hand, she handles her husband Srikant on the other, she’s got a job so there are a lot of dimensions to Suchitra and obviously working with Manoj sir is icing on the cake.

For you, Neeraj?

I’m from the Malayalam industry and it’s my debut in Hindi. Everything was new to me. First of all I had to learn a lot of Hindi lines, secondly it was sync sound, so no dubbing.

So Priyamani and Neeraj, both of you have worked in a bunch of South films across languages. You’ve worked in Malayalm. Is it any different working here?

Priyamani: For me, apart from the language, nothing else is different for me. I ask this only because so many actors from the South who’ve come to Bollywood have spoken about how they are almost demigods there, and here the audience doesn’t have that kind of god loyalty to an actor any more.

So recently it’s really easy to get offended. People get offended at any kind of content and so far censorship has been away from the web space but apparently it might kick in. Is that something as artists that you worry about?

Manoj: I would say that it would be vey difficult because all the major players on streaming platforms are coming from outside. The streaming is happening outside and to control that will be very difficult. I must also add that I have always been against censorship. The filmmakers are so responsible. I mean Anurag Kashyap – everyone talks about ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ where there were abuses, but the same Anurag Kashyap in ‘Mukkabaaz’ didn’t have one abuse. You should leave it to the directors and his discretion. It should be his prerogative. He’s a creative person, he’s not here to titillate you or sensationalise anything. He’s more interested in telling a story. Yeah. Look at it in the context of the story and also leave it to the audience. Like if it’s an ‘A’-rated film and I’m above 18 then I have the right to go watch whatever I want. And look if your household is disorganised, you really don’t have control over your kid. Then the parents should be the people who are monitoring these things.

Camera: Sanjoy Deb
Camera Assistant: Gautam Sharma
Video Editor: Veeru Krishan Mohan