Ahead of The Night Manager’s première in February, people assumed that the team would feel pressured about the inevitable comparisons with the popular British original of the same name. But creator-director Sandeep Modi had different concerns. The team of the Disney+ Hotstar series had decided to split the Anil Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur and Sobhita Dhulipala-starrer into two parts, with the second instalment dropping online months after the première.

“Will people have emotional memory of the show? That was my first question,” recounts Modi.

His second doubt was whether the Indian audience was ready to consume a series at a slow pace, in contrast to the bingeing fashion synonymous with OTT. “Some stories need to be seen in a certain way. This is the story of a man, who has seen the death of a little girl and has succumbed to his powerlessness. He wants to take on the powerful, but that [transition] would require some time to be felt. [Initially], I tried to watch the show in entirety. But after some time, I felt I needed a break to savour it. So, I recommended that we do a weekly episode. The team said that the model wasn’t suitable, and they wanted to split it. I wanted to take the risk and see what happens if I don’t allow the audience to binge it,” he explains.

Evidently, the risk has paid off with viewers awaiting the second part that drops online later this month. Casting Kapur, mostly known for his romantic roles, as a brooding man was another gamble. Modi says the leading man did a month-long workshop to slip into the role.

“Aditya is a hungry actor. Also, his intent with the character was the same as mine. He understood that we were not going to use the 20 standard tropes that an actor develops over his journey. We did a month of workshops to find the character, someone who doesn’t speak much but conveys his intent through his eyes.”

One of the criticisms about the first part was that Dhulipala’s character seemed under-developed. Modi reveals he had pre-empted this response.

“When we decided to split the show, I called Anil Kapoor and Sobhita Dhulipala, and apologized to them. I thought the first four episodes did slight injustice to them. But surprisingly, I got a call from Mahesh Bhatt who asked about Sobhita. He said, ‘Who is this actor? There is a whole story about her silences.’ People praised Anil sir as well.”