Actor Pratik Gandhi recently led the patriotic series Saare Jahan Se Accha, released just before Independence Day. Set during the Indo-Pak tensions of the 1970s, the series explores a spy’s story. With the show premiering shortly after the recent India-Pakistan conflict, Pratik admits the timing made promotions tricky.

The 45-year-old says, “We were very clear when we shot that it’s not about jingoism. But the concern did arise. Once we learned the release date — and considering what had happened recently — the context shifted in the audience’s mind,” adding, “That’s when you have to be very careful while talking about your project, because you know there’s no agenda, propaganda or jingoism involved. But how do you convey that to an audience whose mindset has already shifted?”

Producer Sejal Shah echoes the sentiment, emphasizing that the aim was never to push an agenda. “The storytelling in the show was always about emotions. It’s a story about love for one’s country and the sacrifices people are willing to make for it. The goal wasn’t about revenge or violence; it was peaceful — aimed at stopping a war.”

Pratik adds that the team consciously avoided loud patriotism. “There is a fine line between patriotism and jingoism, and we were clear that we didn’t want to make it jingoistic. In today’s hyperactive social media world, if something is repeated enough, people start believing it. I believe patriotism is an emotion you carry within, and there are multiple ways to express it – the easiest being to shout about it. But when you add depth, make it interesting, intriguing, and relatable, that’s where the real difference lies,” he says.

The actor adds, “When you feel ‘Mera Bharat Mahaan’, just communicate it. Actually, even without you saying these words, I should feel that oh my God, this guy feels a lot about his country.”

(From left) Actors Suhail Nayyar, Kritika Kamra, Anup Soni, Sunny Hinduja, and Pratik Gandhi at the special chat moderated by mid-day’s Priyanka Sharma, at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai. Pics/Kirti Surve Parade

To celebrate India’s 79th Independence Day on Friday, mid-day and Netflix India brought a slice of the country’s past to St Xavier’s College in Mumbai. The auditorium was packed with eager students, their eyes glued to the stage, where the cast of Saare Jahan Se Accha — a spy thriller inspired by real-life events of the 1970s — sat down for a chat with mid-day.

The show — starring Pratik Gandhi, Sunny Hinduja, Kritika Kamra, Anup Soni, and Suhail Nayyar — dropped online only a day before Hrithik Roshan and Jr NTR’s ambitious spy offering War 2 opened in cinemas.

Pointing out that the series and the YRF spy films hail from dramatically different worlds, we posed a hypothetical scenario to Gandhi: What would Vishnu Shankar, his intelligence officer character in the show, chat about with Roshan’s Kabir Dhaliwal, Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan, and Salman Khan’s Tiger if they crossed paths?

“I don’t think I’ll recruit them ever. I’ll ask them to join the entertainment industry,” he quipped, eliciting uproarious laughter from the audience.

Gandhi had his reason for the choice. When we mentioned that the treatment of spies and their lives in Saare Jahan Se Accha is gritty and real, a marked difference from that in films, the actor elaborated, “War 2 and all those films talk about wars. The heroes are fighting the wars, whereas real-life spies’ job is to avoid wars.”

The actor pointed out another difference — the agents on the big screen look too dashing for their own good. “These agents are not supposed to look like heroes, because then they will [draw] attention. They should be able to blend in. If they can do any kind of stunts, I guess the world will know that this guy is up to something,” he said.

Given the occasion, we asked the actors what freedom means to them. Kamra said, “Freedom is the ability to dissent. You are truly free with someone, or as a citizen, if you can speak your mind fearlessly.”

Soni added, “If we can hug each other, say what we want, eat whatever we want, that’s freedom.”

Pratik Gandhi at Aga Khan Palace (Pic: Jignesh Mistry)

Apart from getting the country vibing to a banger opening theme, Hansal Mehta’s Scam 1992 also gave the audience an actor to look forward to – Pratik Gandhi. With a body of work that spans Gujarati films, Hindi plays, OTT shows and movies, Pratik has become a name to reckon with, more so in the last two years with projects like Do Aur Do Pyaar, Agni, Madgaon Express, Dhoom Dhaam and Phule. In a chat with us, the actor speaks about his love for theatre, his takeaway from the Phule controversy and why the struggle of Bollywood films is more complex than it looks. Excerpts:

“Theatre is an actor’s gym,” says Pratik, who was in the city to stage Mohan Ka Masala, in which he played the role of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. “It is a place where you can work on different prototypes. When you perform in a play, you go through the same story and emotions multiple times. I live that character more than once and it gives me the chance to rehearse my craft,” says the actor. 

Highlighting that tools and theoretical knowledge are of no use if you can’t implement them, Pratik adds, “Film institutes can teach you about the tools you can use as an actor, or about the theory part of the profession, but theatre gives you a platform to implement that knowledge practically. That’s something no other place can give you.”

Bollywood has been trying to figure out what really clicks with the audience post the pandemic. While experts try to decipher that, Pratik shares a different take on why the industry is struggling. “It’s a very complex thing. You can’t look at the problem from just one lens – of content, marketing, etc,” says the actor, adding, “I feel that for the longest time, filmmakers and the audience were evolving together, almost in sync with each other. But during the pandemic the exposure to global content happened and the audience suddenly evolved multifold. Makers, on the other hand, could not evolve that fast and that created a huge gap which we are all trying to fill up. It’s happening, but it will take some time.”

Pratik also feels that the audience’s evolution was unprecedented. “Earlier, India was looked at as a less English-speaking market and makers would be told to dumb stories down. Now, people are watching Korean and Spanish shows. Someone sitting in a remote area is watching an English show on their phone. This was something no one predicted. We keep saying art has no barriers. The audience just proved it.”

Another enemy everyone is fighting nowadays is the overuse of data in filmmaking. If you are creating a film or show on the basis of data interpretation, then you don’t need human brains to work in this industry

A few months ago, Phule, which featured Pratik and Patralekhaa as Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, respectively, had a brush with controversy after certain groups opposed the film’s release. While the film did get a stamp of approval from critics and viewers after it released, Pratik says he wasn’t surprised with what happened.

“The world has become impatient. We want to react and jump the gun before watching or understanding anything,” he says, adding, “In the chaotic world of social media and hyperconnectivity, nobody has the time to process anything. I keep giving this example to people that in the Doordarshan days, news anchors would read the news to you, without added emotion or a specific tone. This was so you could interpret the news the way you wanted to, without being biased. Now, news is interpreted and given to you. You are not supposed to use your brain. Looking at everything, I was not surprised by the people’s reaction to Phule. I faced the same issues during Bhavai (2021). What people think and what can offend them, that’s something nobody can gauge.”

Having played Mahatma Phule on screen and Mahatma Gandhi on stage, Pratik says that so many things from these legendary figures’ lives are relevant even today. “We hear about discrimination, wars and people justifying violence in different ways every day. These are things that these prominent figures in Indian history fought against. I think they were visionaries because they could visualize that the world would need guiding thoughts in difficult times even if they weren’t around. That makes them significant even today,” he says.

Speaking about his play Mohan Ka Masala, Pratik adds, “We tend to think that Gandhiji was born with qualities of a Mahatma but it’s not like that. He was a common man like any of us who made mistakes and learnt from them. The message you can take away from the play is that everyone has been given qualities to become a Mahatma. It is the choices you make that define your journey.”

In his next OTT show, Saare Jahan Se Accha, Pratik plays a spy. Speaking about the same, he says, “We’ve often seen spies as these super-special, heroic people who can do anything. That’s not the case in real life and we have tried to show that with our next. Spies six-packs wale thodi hote hai!”

On the topic of six-pack abs, we ask him about his shirtless act in Dhoom Dhaam and whether he would do it again. Pratik laughs and shares, “I don’t mind at all! I have always looked like that. Just that I had never taken my shirt off on screen before Dhoom Dhaam.”

On a concluding note, we ask the actor if he and the team are open to a Madgaon Express sequel. To that, Pratik says, “The whole team is super excited to do it again. We are all just waiting for Kunal (Kemmu) to come up with an idea. It was a crazy, mad film.”

When Netflix India unveiled its 2025 slate in February, one of the shows that caught attention was Pratik Gandhi's Saare Jahan Se Accha. Set in the 1970s, the spy thriller — which also stars Tillotama Shome, Rajat Kapoor, and Sunny Hinduja — revolves around an Indian undercover agent who is sent to Pakistan to stop it from becoming a nuclear force. Sources indicate that with a chunk of the series set in Pakistan, director Sumit Purohit and his team had to recreate parts of the country in India.

A source said, “More than half the story is set in the neighbouring country. As the unit couldn’t travel to Pakistan, massive sets reflecting Karachi were made in Mumbai and Chandigarh. One was built at the Golden Tobacco Factory in Vile Parle, Mumbai, and a Karachi marketplace was recreated at a local market in Chandigarh.”

Sejal Shah and Bhavesh Mandalia, who recently backed Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Costao, serve as the series’ producers and showrunners. “It is one of Netflix India’s biggest series, with a budget of around Rs 100 crore,” added the source.

Saare Jahan Se Accha comes as the latest offering from Gandhi, who is on an upward streak with Madgaon Express (2024), Do Aur Do Pyaar (2024), and Dhoom Dhaam earlier this year. But unlike these projects, the spy thriller will see him step into a grey role — something that he excels in, if his breakthrough show Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020) was any indication.

“The makers needed someone who could give a strong performance, and Pratik fit the bill. He is playing a complex character — under the cover of being a diplomat, he is an R&AW [Research and Analysis Wing] agent who stops Pakistan’s nuclear program. The role has been inspired by different real-life Indian spies. The show depicts the period when late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was at the helm, and R N Kao was heading R&AW, as India and Pakistan were trying to edge out one another in the nuclear arms race.”

Initially, the six-episode series was titled For Your Eyes Only. What brought on the rechristening? The source added that it was a mutual decision between the makers and the streaming giant. “All the stakeholders felt Saare Jahan Se Accha was a better fit as it’s desi and reflects the show’s patriotic theme.”