When Manoj Bajpayee was approached to lend his voice as the narrator for The Vial, the actor saw it as an opportunity to pay tribute to the scientists who raced against time to develop the vaccine. History TV18’s latest documentary, featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bill Gates, Adar Poonawalla and Dr Krishna Ella, delves into how India conducted the world’s largest vaccination drive in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic.

“We have all gone through the pandemic together. I wanted to pay my tribute to all the scientists who worked on the vaccine relentlessly, the health workers and frontline workers. These reasons inspired me to work in The Vial,” says Bajpayee of the documentary.

Aired on March 24, The Vial brings the inside story of how the two COVID-19 vaccines— Covishield and Covaxin— were developed from the isolation of the strain in Pune’s National Institute of Virology, manufactured in huge quantities and delivered to the country’s massive population.

“The documentary is all about how the vaccine came about, the people who worked day and night on it, forgetting about their families and everything else,” adds Bajpayee, praising the director for packing in such extensive data in a 60-minute offering.

“It must have been a challenge for the director as they shot so many visuals and collected so much data,” says the actor, who, in the past, served as the narrator for Neeraj Pandey’s Secrets of the Kohinoor, and Secrets of Sinauli: Discovery Of The Century.