‘When you look Freedom at midnightI want you to feel like you’re sitting on a time bomb.

IMAGE: RJ Malishka as Sarojini Naidu, Sidhant Gupta as Jawaharlal Nehru, Chirag Vora as Mahatma Gandhi and Rajendra Chawla as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Nikkhl Advani’s Freedom at midnight.

Nikkhil Advani takes on a new challenge: showing Indians how their country achieved independence through its web series, Freedom at midnight.

It is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, which looks back on the last years of the British Raj.

Starring Chirag Vohra as Monhandas Karamchand Gandhi, Sidhant Gupta as Jawaharlal Nehru, Arif Zakaria as Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Ira Dubey as his sister Fatima Jinnah, RJ Malishka as Sarojini Naidu and Rajendra Chawla as Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the series airs on SonyLIV.

Nikkhil tells Rediff.com Main contributor Roshmila Bhattacharya“What I understood from my reading and research was that Gandhi had crazy principles and ideology. Sardar Patel was pragmatic and realistic, with a clear understanding of what was happening on the ground. Nehru was caught between an ideological Gandhi and the pragmatism of Sardar.”

The global political climate today is very unstable, with two wars raging and several more that could break out any day. Would you say it’s the right time for a show that takes us back to a volatile time in history and makes world leaders think?

I don’t think Freedom at midnight because a spectacle will prevent anyone from making decisions on a global scale.

But to quote William L Shirer The rise and fall of the Third Reichthose who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

This is why I am attracted to projects like Air Transport, Rocket Boys, Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway, Mumbai Diaries And Freedom at midnight that document a period, whether it occurred years ago or is more contemporary.

So we don’t forget it and can learn from it in the future.

For me personally, this show was too big an opportunity to pass up.

Despite the partition, religious differences are growing again across the world. What is your opinion on this?

I grew up in a house that celebrates every Hindu festival, including Navratri, twice a year.

Half of my family are Sindhis, second-generation refugees from undivided India.

The other half are Maharashtrians who celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi long before it became fashionable.

I went to the temple with my father every Sunday, but he also took me to the dargah.

My grandparents wrote in Arabic.

My grandmother, a beautiful Sindhi woman, mother of five and grandmother of 13, often exclaimed, “Hai Allah!’

This is the religion I know.

This is what Mahatma Gandhi expected from this country.

This is the story I want to tell.

IMAGE: Nikkhil Advani with Chirag Vora who plays Gandhi. Photography: Courtesy of Chirag Vora/Instagram

But you come from a generation that has only heard and seen images of the Partition, and not experienced it directly. Was it a handicap during the production Freedom at midnight?

My grandmother, originally from Karachi, often spoke, with pride and sadness, of all that they had to leave behind when they migrated.

She never let us forget it.

She ensured that all her children and grandchildren received a good education.

While documenting these turbulent times in my own humble way, I found myself reliving his stories.

I also watched the Richard Attenborough film Gandhi and that of Govind Nihalani TamasI found myself returning to the devastating 1947 photographs taken by American photographer Margaret Bourke White, as well as those in Henri Cartier-Bresson’s film. India in full format.

You used a lot of stock footage. Was it difficult to obtain?

Not at all because in 1946-1947, when it was clear that the British were leaving and India would finally gain independence, the BBC and other news agencies, along with renowned photographers and documentarians of the world entire, arrived here and covered every moment of the story.

All these images were available to us, it’s just that in a world of intellectual property, you had to be sure you had all the rights and permissions.

We shot wherever we wanted and got all the footage we needed from the BBC and the Film Division.

We also had access to all the books of the time.

The idea was that the more information we got, the more clarity we would have about the events, the more we could look at them from different angles, which would help us propagate what is contained in the book.

IMAGE: Sidhant Gupta, Chirag Vora and Rajendra Chawla in Freedom at midnight.

Did you also have to take creative liberties?

Of course I did.

My whole attempt is to make the viewer aware of the private conversations between Gandhi and Nehru, Gandhi and Sardar Patel, Nehru and Jinnah, etc.

While Louis Mountbatten opened his journals and diaries to Larry Colins and Dominique Lapierre, he was only aware of the conversations between our Indian leaders until August 15, 1947.

After this, his role as the last Viceroy of India became that of the first Governor General of the Dominion of India and he then had limited access to them.

So I had to choose the event we were recounting, consider the overall position of those participating in the discussion or discussion about it, and create a scene from it since I too was not aware of these conversations.

What I understood from my reading and research is that Gandhi had crazy principles and ideology.

Sardar Patel was pragmatic and realistic, with a clear understanding of what was happening on the ground.

Nehru was caught between an ideological Gandhi and the pragmatism of Sardar Patel.

There are people who thought that Nehru and Gandhi gave the green light to Partition, but on your show they seem completely opposite.

Gandhi was completely against it, others accepted it at different times during this last year of the British Raj.

Gandhi believed that the violence would not end with the division of the country.

He would point out that when you cut the roots of a tree, pedon ko hosh nahin rahta ki woh kahan gir raha hai.

He insisted that the same would apply to uprooted people.

And he was right.

From Bengal to Punjab to Lahore to Rawalpindi, the entire country was like a ticking time bomb.

You blew a fuse and another one blew somewhere else.

My editor Shweta Venkat complained that after seven months, the ticking was coming out of her ears.

When you watch the show, I want you to also feel like you’re sitting on a time bomb.

IMAGE: Rajendra Chawla and Sidhant Gupta in Freedom at midnight.

How long did the Freedom at midnight to pull?

We filmed both seasons of the series together for 120 days. With turnaround times and travel, this extended to 150-160 days.

It was like running a marathon, you had to pace yourself to have the stamina to continue.

Additionally, you had to be able to show your unit the same level of enthusiasm from day one to day 120.

When you arrive on the set of such a huge production, you need to be well prepared.

The direction and camerawork were consistent with the conversations we had during the many workshops.

IMAGE: Luke McGibney as Lord Mountbatten and Cordelia Bugeja as Lady Edwina Mountbatten in Freedom at midnight.

Did you sometimes have to improvise on the spot?

I improvise every day and I’m not known for sticking to the script.

In this case, I had to be a little more structured because of the language and characters I was dealing with.

But all of my actors had also read a lot, and when one of them gave me an interesting suggestion, I had to assess whether it fit into the larger narrative and then allow them to fly with it.

Give us an example.

Well, Sidhant came in one day with a quote from Nehru that he had read and wondered if we could incorporate it into a particular scene.

Luke McGibney, who plays Mountbatten, also wanted to deliver certain lines in a different way.

We had divided the fire scenes in Lahore into several days of shooting, but we finally did it in a single day after many rehearsals.

When you’re shooting in temperatures ranging from 48 to 50 degrees Celsius, all your planning goes out the window and you have to figure out how to improvise that day without wasting time or resources.

IMAGE: Nikkhil Advani with Sidhant Gupta, Chirag Vora, Rajendra Chawla, Ira Dubey, Arif Zakaria and RJ Malishka. Photography: Courtesy of Chirag Vora/Instagram

Today, when you look back on the series, what will you remember Freedom at midnight in five years?

I’m happy that my daughter Keya, who is 18 and has been working on the series for a few months, is reading more books about Nehru, Gandhi and Patel.

I just hope that everyone who turned to science after rocket boys will now start reading the history through Freedom at midnight.

At Emmay Entertainment, we punch above our weight class all the time.

Air Transport, Rocket Boys, Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway, Freedom At Midnight were all difficult stories and we will continue to tell such stories.

(Laughter) Many think that after rocket boys And Freedom at midnight, we have enough props and costumes to save on the budget of our next film or show.

There are a lot of exciting things on the anvil and you can expect announcements soon.

But before your next visit, you will surely take a well-deserved vacation.

What vacation? I have to start post-production on season 2 of Freedom at midnight immediately.

Vedayour latest film as director with John Abraham as lead actor and co-producer, released this year on Independence Day, with Street 2.
Given that the horror comedy has become the biggest blockbuster in Hindi cinema, do you think it would have been wiser to go ahead Vedawill he be released in a few weeks?

Satyamev Jayate And Batla House also released on August 15, 2018 and 2019, along with other films, and still performed well.

(Laughter) What I could have done was make sure Street 2 It wasn’t a very good film, but it wasn’t in my hands.