Farzana Patowari (BOMBAY TIMES; December 23, 2019)

Director Anurag Basu is shooting his new, untitled film with Rajkummar Rao and Fatima Sana Shaikh in Bhopal. He insists that he has no favourites in the film industry, however he prefers exploring new talent. “Everybody is different,” he says, adding, “Till the time I had not worked with Sana and Rajkummar, I thought that Ranbir (Kapoor) achha hai. I did two films with him and at that time, I thought there is no better actor than him. Then I realised that Sana and Rajkummar’s approach is also amazing. In fact, this generation is different, everyone is so confident about their craft. They don’t think much about hits or flops, they only care about their work. I want to work with Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, and Ayushmann Khurrana next.”

Anurag, who has worked as an assistant director for a TV show, keeps returning to the medium as a reality judge, even after doing films like Life In A… Metro, Barfi! and Jagga Jasoos. “I am from television and one leg of mine is always in it, because TV is my second love,” he says. However, while talking about the proliferation of naag-naagin and other supernatural shows, he says that the mainstream TV lacks risk-takers today. “There are two ways to look at it. First is that we ourselves believe that the audience wants this, and that’s why the TRP is rising. And so it becomes a formula every channel adopts, as they know it will work,” he says. “But I like to look at it the other way — that until we don’t give the audience something new, how will we know things could be different? This is the risk people are not taking. They are like, ‘chal raha hai… chalne do’. Back in my time, we had creative people behind the channels. Now, it is also based on surveys, numbers and statistics,” the filmmaker signs off.