After working on the first season of the Sushmita Sen-starrer Aarya, an Indian adaptation of the Dutch series Penoza, director Sandeep Modi’s next project was The Night Manager (TNM), which was also an adaptation of the Tom Hiddleston-starrer of the same name.

What is it about adapting international projects that attracts him? “There are a few stories that everyone keeps moving around. Here’s one such story, which had a good run and was told well. It’s like a Shakespeare story that is relevant in India and the world even now. That becomes an interesting factor for me,” the filmmaker says.

The second part of TNM will be out soon. Not “resting on our laurels”, Modi admits that splitting the season and releasing part 2 after a long break was a “huge responsibility”. “I was worried that people were going to get so angry about this thing (splitting the show). Even if they like the show, what if they don’t like the idea of the way we’re presenting it?” he shares, adding, “Now that the bar has been raised, you have to try to beat it, or in the worst case, you have to match it.”

The filmmaker adds that for him, “OTT is a hybrid of films and television”. “You can either think of it like a film, where you watch the whole film together (in one go), or you can think of it like television, where you tell a story over a period of time. We have, so far, been used to the idea of watching it like a film,” he shares.

The show brought back Anil Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur onscreen together, after their first collab in the film Malang (2020). Talking about pitting actors from different generations against each other, Modi states, “They have their own specialties and it’s a joy to work with two diverse personalities.”

For the prep, the actors had separate workshops on set, so “it was like a boxing game”. Modi elaborates, “Both of them didn’t know what prep the other has made, so that they are on top of their game and their antennas are up.”