HT DIGITAL
Mumbai, Aug 9 (PTI): Shooting a wedding on screen is as “intense” as shooting action, says director Reema Kagti about the second season of her web series “Made in Heaven”, which follows the journey of two friends who run a wedding planning agency.
COVID-19 pandemic or not, the scale of production and number of actors on set made the process all the more demanding, she said.
“Shooting (the show) was very challenging. ‘Made in Heaven’ is like a beast, so even without COVID-19, even season one, it had such a huge ensemble cast, every episode had a wedding. Shooting a wedding is like shooting action, it is pretty intense.
“When COVID-19 opened up, you could not have more than 50 people on set, but there is no day when you can shoot ‘Made in Heaven’ with less than 50 people. The logistics, the number of locations, so many directors, and actors. Special mention to the production team, AD (assistant direction) team, this was a very wild beast to tame,” Kagti told PTI in an interview. Set against the backdrop of quintessential Indian weddings, the Prime Video series follows wedding planners Karan Mehra (Arjun Mathur) and Tara Khanna (Sobhita Dhulipala) navigating the complexities of organising wedding ceremonies while their own lives unfold in unexpected ways.
The first season of “Made in Heaven”, which premiered in 2019, received critical acclaim and an International Emmy nomination for Mathur.
Kagti, who described the show as an “experiment”, said the success of season one added a lot of pressure on the team while creating the second chapter. The team spent around a year writing the story of the follow-up season, she added.
“When we wrote season one, it was a huge experiment because there wasn’t stuff like this out there. We had no idea what it was going to do. Once, it came out and went down so well, that added a lot of pressure to writing. You want to up your game, you want to come up with something better.”
Season one explored themes of class divide, sexuality and acceptance. The new installment is directed by Kagti, Zoya Akhtar, Alankrita Shrivastava, Neeraj Ghaywan, and Nitya Mehra.
Fresh from the success of “Dahaad” — another Prime Video series, Kagti said there was a “concerted effort” to make “Made in Heaven” season two not only bigger, but also deeper and dirtier in terms of themes, characters, and their graphs.
