Kunal Kapoor remembers reading Alex Rutherford’s Raiders From The North, the first book in The Empire Of The Moghul series. Call it serendipity or what you will, but a few months later, the actor received a call from Nikkhil Advani, who offered him the role of Babur in The Empire. “Nikkhil said he has the book rights and wanted me to read the script. Sometimes, scripts are not able to live up to the source material, but here, the script enhances it,” says Kapoor, who fronts the Disney+ Hotstar period piece that dropped over the weekend.

Telling the story of Mughals in the current social climate is not easy. As soon as the Mitakshara Kumar-directed series dropped online, a section of social media users expressed their anger against it for “glorifying the Mughals.”

Kapoor says he tried to be honest to Babur, a man of many contradictions. “Babur in the show is probably different from how Babur was [in real life]. We were being honest to the way the character was written in the book. In the book, he was a physically strong man who was emotionally vulnerable, even weak sometimes. He is the emperor, but is crippled with self-doubt. He is constantly asking himself if he is good enough for the throne. I found these nuances fascinating. I saw in him a man torn between the voice of his father — a softer, poetic man [Umar Sheikh Mirza II] — and his ambitious grandmother [Aisan Daulat Begum]. In historical dramas, there is a tendency to make it theatrical. I wanted him to come across as relatable.”

Many had thought that things would look up for the actor post Veeram (2017), the acclaimed Malayalam rendition of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Does he feel that he didn’t get his due? “The moment you say you didn’t get your [due], or you should’ve got more, it will make you a bitter person. I don’t want to project myself as a victim of the industry. I live in the present. I am being offered exciting work and I would rather focus on that.”

One look at the trailer of The Empire, and zealous Indian netizens immediately drew comparisons with the iconic Game Of Thrones. While the comparisons are premature, there’s no denying that creator Nikkhil Advani has taken on an ambitious task — through the eight-part Disney+ Hotstar offering that is adapted from the first book in Alex Rutherford’s Empire Of The Moghul series, he will offer a retelling of the life and times of Mughal emperor Babur up until the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. With the material of this nature at hand, wasn’t he inclined to design it as an elaborate big-screen outing? “This story can’t be told in two hours; that would be gross injustice to the book. Our intention is to adapt all six books in the series,” begins Advani.

The creator’s singular brief to director Mitakshara Kumar, who has trained under Sanjay Leela Bhansali, was to make it an extravagant affair. “I was constantly hovering around to ensure we made it bigger,” he laughs, adding that shooting post the 2020 lockdown was an ordeal. “Our crew strength [pre-lockdown] was 400, and post the lockdown, we were told only 50 junior artistes could be used. [Since 2020], we went to Uzbekistan thrice; the weather was a spoilsport every time. Writing was relatively easier. We brought down a Hollywood writing consultant [Matt Pyken] who joined the director, Bhavani Iyer, myself and the internal teams from Emmay and Hotstar. During the lockdown, we went back to writing, and were able to flesh out the women characters better. These women [influenced] the dynasty by being manipulative, courageous, kind and sacrificial.”

The team hired a historian to ensure they are factually accurate, every step of the way. “From the scripts to the costumes, the lyrics to dialogues, everything was sent to Ejaz bhai [Syed Ejaz Hussain, History department, Visva Bharati University] for vetting. This was followed by an intensive legal vetting at the streaming giant’s end.”

Though the period drama was earlier announced with Shabana Azmi, Ronit Roy and Dia Mirza, the latter two were replaced to include Kunal Kapoor, Drashti Dhami and Dino Morea. Asked what led to the change in the cast, he says, “We changed our approach to the story. Earlier, we wanted three heroes to play Kunal’s character, but that was reduced to two. Kunal did justice to both, the younger and older parts. Drashti came well-recommended by Gaurav Banerjee [president and head, Hindi and English Entertainment, Star India] because we didn’t have time to set up her character. Her off-screen image was important for that instant connect and given her television presence, she was a great fit.” 

Difficult as it is to achieve the grand scale of the show, Advani probably has a bigger hurdle. It presumably cannot be easy to tell an honest story about Mughals in the current political and social climate. He takes a pause before saying, “I am lucky that we have the rights to the book. We have blindly followed the book. Diana Preston and her husband Michael Preston, who use the pen name Alex Rutherford, are avid historians of the Mughal period. As creators, we have to be true to the characters.”

The creator hopes that the drama creates “hungama” so that he can make the second instalment even grander. “I envy the makers of Mirzapur. They put out a teaser, and fans go gaga. I hope we are able to create that frenzy. But eventually, as a creator, I hope we can tell the story that we are supposed to be telling,” he smiles, leaving us to decode that loaded sentence.