GQ India – August 2019

40 — AUGUST 2019

VIBE

Kalki Koechlin,

Nawazuddin

Siddiqui and

Pankaj Tripathi

in Sacred

Games S2

greenlit the new season before the

#MeToo controversy effectively split

Phantom Films (after conducting

its own investigation), but with

a few role changes. Co-director

Vikramaditya Motwane switched

to showrunner; Neeraj Ghaywan

(director of Masaan) was brought

in to steer Sartaj Singh’s (Saif Ali

Khan) arc; and Kashyap continued

to direct Ganesh Gaitonde’s story

(played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui) –

arguably one of the most complex

characters brought to screen.

“It feels like we’ve been doing

Sacred Games forever,” Kashyap

says. “It’s been such a long process,

exhausting and exciting. It just

keeps getting bigger.”

What is it about Gaitonde’s character

that fascinates you the most?

He’s full of contradictions. He has a

lot of humanity in him, it’s just that

he doesn’t know it. He’s suppressed

it. At the beginning of the first

season, you saw that humanity force

its way out. We saw how Subhadra

[Rajshri Deshpande] helped him

become a man, one who started

to respect women and get over

the trauma that made him blame

the world. Gaitonde is constantly

learning, he is a student of life.

Has your understanding of Gaitonde

changed over time?

[For the series], I’m just following

the interpretation that came from

[scriptwriter] Varun Grover and

Vikram [Motwane]. But for me, the

journey has been different because

when Vikram Chandra [author of the

book Sacred Games] was writing this

and Suketu [Mehta] was working on

Maximum City, I was researching

Black Friday. We all started together.

Back then, in the late 1990s, early

2000s, we were all also working

on Mission Kashmir, and we were

going to the same sources. So we all

know each other’s stories, who’s been

fictionalised and where particular

elements have come from. So I guess,

in a way, this gives me the liberty to

reinterpret it.

What was new and exciting about

shooting for Season 2?

It’s the first time I’ve shot in Kenya,

South Africa and in the middle of

the ocean. It was exciting to be able

to explore and bring local cultures

into the mix. Like, we found this

"IN THE 1970S,

HOLLYWOOD

CHANGED THE

WAY THEY

MADE FILMS;

BUT NOW,

T H E M ARVEL

UNIVERSE HAS

TAKEN OVER

AGA I N. We

want to BE

CONSTANTLY

ENTERTAINED"