‘Casting Ayush’s character in 'Jalsa' was a sensitive process’: Casting director Anmol Ahuja

Abhishek Banerjee (left) and Anmol Ahuja are the co-founders of Casting Bay.

Casting decisions are purely instinctive 95 percent of the time, says Anmol Ahuja, co-founder Casting Bay. He and his partner Abhishek Banerjee were bang-on when they selected Surya Kasibhatla to play the role of Maya's (Vidya Balan) son Ayush in the film Jalsa on Amazon Prime Video. The reel-life Ayush has cerebral palsy, as does Surya in real life. Earlier, Ahuja and his team have been appreciated for casting a transgender to play the role of one in the series Paatal Lok. Edited excerpts from a conversation:

When we read the script, we thought it would be interesting to cast someone who has the same condition and could also act. The major challenge for us was that we started casting when the second wave of the pandemic was at its peak, which meant that we would not do in-person auditions. We took two routes - one was to audition children with this condition and those who did not... Surprisingly, before auditioning Surya we saw one of his videos on YouTube where he was talking about how to bat while playing cricket. In his introduction scene in the script, he is shown recording a video where he is talking about how to bowl. So, it felt like the stars were aligned.

Surya’s parents are techies from Hyderabad who moved to Texas, US, five years ago. They were very supportive and involved when we started the audition process online. While auditioning, we realised that his profile matches Vidya (Balan) maam and it looks like he belongs to the same family. We realised it will be better if we include a kid who has the condition because it adds value to the performance and also becomes a lifelong memory for a child.

Actors Surya Kasibhatla and Vidya Balan.

It was the peak of the second wave when we brought Surya from the US to Mumbai. Workshop director Puja Sarup and director Suresh Triveni worked with him for 15-20 days before the shooting started. They adapted the character as close to how Surya is in real life. The dialogues were made shorter so that they conveyed the meaning of what he was saying.

It’s challenging and exciting at the same time. When there is a film with a special requirement for a role, one has to go out of the way to find a particular actor for it. That aspect of casting is really interesting and that’s exactly the reason Abhishek and I enjoy our jobs. He is an actor as well and I have also been interested in producing and directing, but casting helps us be a part of the creative process of filmmaking.

Speaking of inclusivity, a couple of years ago we cast a deaf and mute actor for a commercial for Make My Trip. This was even before we knew of inclusivity as a term. We just wanted to keep it as close to realism as possible.

Casting as a department in Indian cinema is very new. One of the first films that was cast was Gandhi in the early '80s, with Dolly Thakore doing the casting. Then after a gap of 12-13 years, we saw Tigmanshu Dhulia casting for Bandit Queen, and then there was a long gap again after which Zoya Akhtar was credited as casting director for Dil Chahta Hai followed by Gautam Kishanchandani in 2004 for Black Friday and Honey Trehan for Omkara in 2006.

The casting department is extremely new to the process of filmmaking in India. It was the assistant directors who would do the casting earlier. If you recall, films made in the '90s and early 2000s did not have many new faces until Black Friday came along which had fairly new faces, right from the protagonists to other actors.

The casting department came into prominence post 2010 and that was exactly the period Abhishek and I entered the industry. Now it is at a point where whenever a film or series is greenlit, the first department to get hired is the casting department. If you cast your film right, 50 percent of the job is done. It also helps in finding newer talent and bringing them to the forefront.

Shows such as Jamtara, Paatal Lok and Mirzapur are well-written shows. They would have worked anyway because the writing is so strong and the characters are so well-written. In the movie The Dirty Picture, the famous dialogue goes ‘Entertainment, entertainment, entertainment’. Now, it’s all about ‘content, content, content’. Earlier, people would relate to the actors but now, they relate to the characters.

Yes, there is a star system. Filmmaking is an expensive business and is probably the only field where art meets business. A prominent face helps in getting the numbers right, but having said that, the writers and the script are the soul of every story. It is because these writers are writing such interesting characters that our job as casting directors becomes even more interesting. There are enough opportunities for actors to be part of stories and leave an impact, so everyone is able to co-exist.