Amazon Prime Video’s new series, Jubilee, is a grand, richly detailed, and incisive recreation of the Hindi film industry at the time of the birth of independent India. Deftly balancing the real with the fictional, it draws striking parallels at the time between political freedom and the notion of artistic liberty.
Created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Soumik Sen, and written by Atul Sabharwal, Jubilee is helmed by Motwane, who joins us for a conversation about what went into the making of the ambitious series.
Excerpts:
In casting your own gaze inwards into the industry, what approach did you decide to take? It was always at the back of my mind to not get too indulgent, to not get too caught up in what we consider in-jokes. I think there’s a fine line between letting the audience in on what you’re trying to do versus being obtuse and “echo-chambery” about them. Both [scriptwriter] Atul [Sabharwal] and I wanted to make sure that the characters were compelling enough and dramatic enough to let the audience follow them and go on a journey with them.
The period details go beyond the props, the sets, the art deco architecture, the cars and the trams. You are laying bare the process of filmmaking from the past—the music, the song sequences, the edit, the direction… Yes, but always through the eyes of the characters. There’s an important scene involving Binod and Sumitra where the audience sees the process of filmmaking. They see multiple takes being taken, how a crew works, what happens behind the scenes, the magazine running out, the lighting effects, and more. But what you take away is the emotions of the characters. We were conscious of not letting it become a lesson in filmmaking. The visual/production design should be about inhabiting a universe. There’s a tendency to love nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. But I have always felt that when you say period, it doesn’t have to be specifically nostalgia, I think there’s a little bit of going beyond that. I also think that the [series] format allows you the freedom to go deep into characters and storylines and interpersonal relationships and a lot of interesting things that you can’t normally do in a feature film. It’s wonderful if you do it right and the audience comes along for that ride.
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There’s the assertion of the independence of the filmmaker. Roy talks about being a monkey, jumping about on his own, and then becoming a horse that anyone and everyone can ride. How much of a monkey have you and your team been? Amazon, especially Aparna [Purohit, head of India originals], have been amazingly supportive in this process. They go with the excitement of a creator on a pitch level as opposed to going very micro and trying to read every line. Even their process of feedback was fantastic, where you give them 10 scripts, and their notes are one line as opposed to large files full of notes.
But I do think there’s a lot to do with Atul. I was doing Sacred Games while he was writing this. We had to push the series by a couple of years. He had time then to really work on the script, taking two or three months on drafts. So, a lot of material that was coming my way was just beautiful to read. I think that’s the excitement that kept the crew involved as well. Everybody’s reaction on reading the material was like, wow, this is great, I can’t wait to get going. I think that excitement kept us going through the pandemic. It’s very hard normally to delay something and to keep it good. It’s such hard work and you’re giving a commitment of multiple months, sometimes years, to projects, that it’s very hard to get people to stay on, if there’s a break. But every single crew member said it’s fine, we’re on this. And I think that is a testament to the material that we had.
A lot of care has gone into the casting as well. Absolutely, we wanted to get Prasenjit [Chatterjee] and Aditi [Rao Hydari] right in the beginning and they didn’t go through an audition process. I think the rest of it was a very arduous process, especially for Niloufar. Hats off to Casting Bay because of the very inspired casting they did across the board and not just the main characters. Even the casting of Meena [Suhani Popli], for example, or Jay’s father [Arun Govil]. I think it was an inspired move to audition Apar [Aparshakti Khurana] for Binod Das. I had no idea who Sidhant [Gupta, plays Jay Khanna] was, I hadn’t seen his work. I had no idea who Wamiqa [Gabbi, plays Niloufar] was. She auditioned and I thought she was good. We did a look test with her and then I just decided not to cast her. It was during the pandemic that I had time to back and look at all the things—script, casting. I got onto Instagram because of a live chat I had done on it with you. Because of that, I stumbled upon Wamiqa’s handle and I found that she was so chhichhori [playful, flippant] and I thought that it was interesting. While there’s all this style and the way of speaking, there’s something very human about her. So, we auditioned her again.
Lastly, how does the Mumbai filmmaking community from back then resonate with you as a member of the industry now? I think what ties the filmmaking of that era with today’s is the ambition. That ambition of being able to try something that’s one of its kind.
