Confusion was Reema Maya’s first reaction when she was approached to direct the newest instalment of Student Of The Year (SOTY). Having made independent movies and music videos, she wasn’t an expected choice for filmmaker Karan Johar’s franchise that offers a glossy take on campus life. Recalling her first conversation with Johar, she said, “I remember Karan saying, ‘I want you to make it your own.’ He has been true to his word.” The result is Student of the Year: After Dark.

The first two instalments of Student Of The Year were built around romance, rivalry and the glossy world of elite campus life. But when filmmaker Reema Maya was approached to direct the next chapter of the franchise, she wasn't particularly interested in revisiting that territory. Student Of The Year: After Dark takes the familiar school setting and turns it into a murder mystery, with competition, friendships and the insecurities of growing up forming the crux of the story. For Maya, the opportunity came with an unusual degree of creative freedom from franchise creator Karan Johar, who wanted her to bring her own sensibility to the property.

“I've been making music videos and advertising. I've made two short films that went to Sundance. So, this was a completely different world. Suddenly, I was asked if I'd be down to direct a commercial franchise that has been so loved and so popular. My first reaction was a little bit of confusion about why this had come to me,” she recalls.

The conversation with Johar, however, settled her doubts. “They've really been true to that word (of giving autonomy). I guess they'd seen a lot of my work and saw in it some potential that resonated with them enough to trust me with a baby that is so close to Karan's heart. Of course, it means a lot, but it's also a big burden and responsibility.”

The filmmaker says the decision to take the franchise into darker territory came from looking at what the young adult genre and the competition format could offer together. While the earlier films were romantic comedies, she saw an opportunity to use the premise to explore the pressures faced by young people today. “The idea was always supposed to be something that resonates with the youth. It is a very genre-specific franchise, and the first two editions were, of course, rom-coms. I think it was Karan's idea and JioHotstar's idea to see if we could reimagine the franchise. That's when they reached out to me.”

She adds, “Young adult is a genre we don't make enough content in, and we should make more of it. We are a country where the majority of the population is youth, and we need to speak to them more. The second thing was that it's Student Of The Year. It's a competition series, which is such a fun genre to experiment with. I thought I had the opportunity to make a young adult competition series that would have a massive outreach. I then asked myself what I really wanted to see and what conversation I wanted to have with the youth of our country.”

The answer, she says, was the intense culture of competition that has come to define education, friendships and even personal relationships. “I realised that the conversation I wanted to have was about this intense sense of competitiveness that people are constantly being pitted against each other with. We're constantly put in a mind frame of compete, compete, compete, win, win, succeed, succeed. There isn't enough for everyone. So, what does that do to minds? What does that do to friendships and relationships? That was what I wanted to explore through this project and this opportunity. That's how Student Of The Year: After Dark came into being. We wanted to do something that feels relevant to today, something that feels like a conversation you have with the youth of today.”

Turning an established film franchise into a series also gave her more room to develop its characters. Rather than treating the school as a backdrop for a handful of rivalries, Maya wanted to spend time understanding the motivations of the larger group. Her writing process, she says, begins with conversations and observations from real life.

“The fact that this changed into a series from a film helped immensely because the canvas is a lot wider. You can spend more time with the characters and build their arcs a lot more. It is a young adult show set in a high school, so obviously there's going to be a gang of friends, and each person is different. It gave us a wider canvas to build characters who are different from each other and understand them a little better,” she says.

“For me, research starts very simply, within real life. I start by talking to everyone who's either in that age group right now or asking people what they felt and went through when they were in that age bracket. It is really from those life experiences that I decide what world we want to build. From those realities, you then start layering things and building the fiction.”

Working with an existing property, however, came with its own set of expectations. Maya was conscious that the series had to feel fresh without losing the elements that audiences associate with Student Of The Year.

“This one was a bit tricky because it's an existing franchise. There are expectations with it, and it's also supposed to be commercial. That's what Student Of The Year is known for. So, how do you make something that feels new but also feels the right amount of familiar? That was the trickiest thing to do, to see how you balance it. You can get it right or get it wrong, but you have to try and see how you can craft it.”

The darker tone has already prompted comparisons with international young adult shows, particularly 13 Reasons Why. Maya, however, says she hasn't watched the series and is reluctant to let external reference points dictate how Indian stories in the genre are received.

“I've honestly not seen 13 Reasons Why, so I don't know if someone watched the show and told me if it is similar, because I really don't know. But I want India to keep making more and more young adult content so that everything is not compared to an external reference point, and we start believing more in the originality of our own storytelling,” she says.

She is quick to add that she understands why viewers draw such comparisons. “I don't blame audiences either. If you have certain reference points of a particular genre, it's completely understandable that that's what you will think of. But trust me, watch the show.”

Maya says her approach to the series was guided by its themes rather than an attempt to replicate the visual language of popular international shows. “My process is very theme- and objective-based. It starts from the theme of the film and how we want to communicate that to the audience. That's what everything else is built around. When you come into an existing project and have to do your own iteration of it, you have to stay true to the genre. If you're saying this is a young adult murder mystery, there are certain expectations you have to fulfil. If you're saying it's a competition series, there are certain expectations of that genre too. You keep crafting it and see how you can communicate what you really want to say in a way that is as authentic as possible.”

The filmmaker also believes the darker treatment allows the series to acknowledge the anger and frustration that accompany growing up. Having been a teenager herself, she says the emotional intensity of that period is something that stays with people long after they leave school.

“It's something I relate to quite a bit. We've all been teenagers once, and we all know what a frustrating experience that is. In so many ways, that feeling doesn't leave you because it happens at such a formative moment in your life. The grit and angst of the youth will always find its way into the young adult genre. Because this is After Dark, it allowed me to put in all the rage, anger and grit, but also the perseverance and determination that our youth have,” she says.

She also believes rage is an emotion that needs to be acknowledged rather than automatically dismissed. “I believe rage is a very important emotion. We often misunderstand it and think it's something to be suppressed, but it is something to be acknowledged.”

The series was written and shot over the past two years, making the subsequent rise of student movements across the world an interesting parallel for Maya. She says much of the material had already been developed before those developments came into focus.

Casting was another important part of the process. Given that the franchise has served as a launchpad for several young actors, there may have been expectations of familiar faces returning. Maya, however, was more interested in finding fresh talent for the new edition.

“We were thinking the opposite, actually. I wanted to really find and give this opportunity to young, new talent that deserved the stage. Our casting process was quite intensive. The characters were complex, and every character has so many shades that whoever is playing them has to be able to play the entire spectrum of emotions. We were really intensive in trying to find the right people who had that range. Performance was the only consideration when we chose people,” she says.

At the centre of the ensemble is Shanaya Kapoor, who plays twin sisters Aayesha and Aditi. The two characters are markedly different, and Maya says the actor had to navigate the demands of playing both over the course of the shoot. She remembers being struck by how completely Kapoor immersed herself in the roles.

“Shanaya was wonderful. She had a lot to figure out on her plate because she's playing not one, but two characters who are diametrically opposite to each other. And she was there for it. When she was one sister, she was a completely different person,” Maya says.

Recalling an instance from the shoot, she adds, “We were looking at some behind-the-scenes photographs and laughing about the fact that even when she was standing with me, looking at the monitor, she was still in character. For that entire duration, day in and day out, she had just become Aditi. After the shoot got done, when I met her, she spoke differently. She spoke like herself. But for that entire duration, she had just become the protagonist.”

Maya says the entire young cast was equally willing to put in the work required by the series. “It was a blast. This cast was so dedicated. They were so willing to push themselves from a craft perspective, emotionally and physically. It was gruelling. Once you see it, you'll know what all they've had to do for the show. They were down for it. They wanted to do more at every step. It's such a blessing.”

The experience also brought the director closer to the actors, many of whom were navigating demanding roles in a relatively early stage of their careers. “By the end of it, I felt like their teacher. They were my students, my babies. We're all very close and emotionally attached to each other. Even at the trailer launch, you could see the friendship and camaraderie that had developed between the group.”

While the series is set in the privileged surroundings of St Teresa's Heritage School, Maya says she was conscious of ensuring that the characters did not all come from the same background or experience the same challenges. Representation, she says, was an important consideration while building the ensemble.

“I actually care a lot about representation. You have to write in characters who feel true to the story but who also have a resonance in some way. That doesn't mean they have to talk exactly like everybody else or have the exact same problems. But there has to be some emotional resonance that the audience feels towards these characters,” she says.

She adds, “We have a gang, and there are so many different people in the cast. Each person comes from a different background, is battling different aspects of life and dealing with different challenges as a teenager. I was particularly mindful because it's supposed to be this rich school called St Teresa's Heritage School, and it's supposed to be really posh. How do I work in characters who don't come from immense privilege within that palette? We've tried to do that.”