The actor with Kashyap Kapoor and Raghav Raj Kakker

What makes for a good whodunit? That’s the question we pose to Kashyap Kapoor and Raghav Raj Kakker, the writers of The Buckingham Murders that hit the screens yesterday. Kakker says that going into the Kareena Kapoor Khan-starrer, they did not view it as a murder mystery alone.

“While writing The Buckingham Murders, we wanted to explore where the conditions of the murders are coming from. We realised that we can tell a human story while marrying it with a palatable genre,” he explains.

The thriller revolves around Kareena’s detective, who, only months after losing her son, has to investigate a child’s murder case. To director Hansal Mehta and the writer duo, The Buckingham Murders was a film about grief rather than a murder mystery. Kashyap says, “Hansal sir wanted this film to be about grief. Our protagonist has lost her child and she is grieving.”

Kakker adds, “To understand grief, we first had to figure out what grief is. We’re not mothers, we haven’t lost a child. So, we were punching above our weight. When we understood that grief is a version of love that doesn’t know where it is going, we also figured that we have to place it among all our characters. They are all suffering due to lack of love.”

The movie’s first round of reviews compares its mood to that of Kate Winslet’s acclaimed web series, Mare Of Easttown (2022). Kashyap views the comparison as “flattering”.

“That’s a very nice show. But there are no parallels apart from the fact that Kate Winslet and Kareena didn’t wear any make-up. One is a series and another, a film. [The comparisons] are misplaced!” What is working with superstar Kareena like? A blast, says the duo.

Kashyap recalls, “She made us feel so comfortable. We discussed our other films and hers, including Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon [2003]. That’s how a star should be. She was very accessible. She knew the script by heart.”

Kakker, a self-confessed fan of Kareena, found it surreal that she was leading the film he had penned. “If we get a chance to write a female protagonist, we would have Kareena in it every time. Her famous switch-on-switch-off approach is nothing short of magic. She could be chatting with someone 30 seconds before a shot and then straightaway deliver a knockout intense performance. She also set the tone of the film, the metre on which all the actors would work. She brought something to the table that wasn’t in the script. She lived that character.” 

This is their third collaboration with Mehta, after Faraaz (2023) and Modern Love Mumbai (2022). To them, what stands out the most about the director is the freedom he gives his writers. “He takes his writers on set, lets them interact with the actors. He gives you a lot of agency. If everybody in the industry was as secure, writers would be in a much better place today,” says Kakker.

Kashyap adds, “In an industry where nobody is ready to hold your hand, he will do that and tell you what you are doing right and wrong.”