Shashank Khaitan on why working with star kids is not as unnerving as it is made out to be
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 9, 2018)

After almost a year of speculations around her acting debut and its making, Janhvi Kapoor is now gearing up for the release of her Bollywood launch, the Shashank Khaitan-directed Sairat adaptation, Dhadak, in which she features opposite Beyond The Clouds debutant Ishaan Khatter.

Expectations are huge from the film, given its origins and its leads, both of whom hail from families of notable actors. But Khaitan, who has delivered hits with the Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt-starrers Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania and Badrinath Ki Dulhania, is determined not to let anything weigh his actors down. “I don’t believe in these expectations. No one will forgive them or praise them just because they come for a certain family. If the audience accepts them as their characters, only then will they receive love. That’s how I’ve trained them, but I don’t want them to be under undue pressure.”

The director informs that his actors had been a part of the film’s journey much before the shoot began. “An integral part of the prep was that right from my first recce that began in Udaipur, both Janhvi and Ishaan accompanied me, they were part of the second recce too. It was the three of us exploring and trying to understand the city. That’s the advantage of working with newcomers — they have so much time to give you and are ready to grasp everything you want them to. We prepped for six months before we took the film on the floors. One part of it was getting them to live in the city so they know what people there look like and how they talk. That helped them get into their respective characters. Chemistry is just a by-product of them knowing their job,” Khaitan explains.

While his newest directorial has been widely written about as the remake of Nagraj Manjule’s Marathi runaway hit, Khaitan insists that it is more of an adaptation than a remake. “Sairat was an amazing movie that inspired me to take up this film, but I believe there are aspects of the Hindi film that are my own. I just hope we do justice to Sairat and people come out of the theatre happy,” he signs off.