Friday Night Plan is a Babil, brotherhood and boyhood comedy

Babil Khan and Medha Rana in Friday Night Plan, a Netflix comedy film that will release on September 1.

Friday Night Plan, a new Netflix comedy (releasing on September 1) directed by Vatsal Neelakantan features a young cast of actors playing high-school students. The story pivots around brothers played by Babil Khan and Amrith Jayan who throw caution to the wind and break rules in order to attend the most happening party of the year on the day their mother (Juhi Chawla) is away on a business trip. One Friday night becomes momentous for them in more ways than one. Medha Rana and Aadhya Anand, who play sisters Nat and Nitya, join Khan and Neelakantan for a freewheeling chat about the film:

Babil, this is a very different role for you after Qala. What was it like for you to switch from something as intense as that to a character closer to your world, in a lighter genre?

Qala happened very far from this film, timeline-wise. Qala was shot a long time ago and after that I shot Railway Men and then Friday Night Plan. So, I had a lot of time to separate the films. I was extremely happy and excited to do a film where I'm not swallowing mercury or inhaling MIC gas with a mask. I was happy that this film came along and that we were, in some way, going to provide the young adult audience some relief from the anxiety, stresses and pressures of living in a world where you need so much validation to feel good about yourself. That was important for me.

What was the vibe like between you and Amrith Jayan?

We couldn't be separated. We had our own in-jokes going. We had our own philosophy about cinema. We would have debates. He’s an Army kid, so he would teach me slang and he gave me a book on the Special Forces. He’s studying at the Yale School of Drama and we miss him.

You have a younger brother. Were you able to draw from your own relationship with him?

Oh no, because the relationship is so different. The emotion of brothers is the same, of course, but to be very honest, I had already formed a relationship with Amrith that was like a brotherhood. My relationship with my brother Ayaan is very different. Drawing on one for the other would have brought chaos to something that was already happening organically. I also bonded a lot with Vatsal, and just channeled his experiences and empathised with him. I met his family, I knew his story and what it meant to him. Amrith and my relationship just fell into place.

Babil Khan and Amrith Jayan in Friday Night Plan.

Vatsal, what was the starting point for this story? Was it a relationship between two brothers? Was it a teenage crush? Was it a Friday night plan?

In school, we were a group of friends and we thought we were very cool because we'd get together on Saturdays and just have sleepovers etc. and we called it a Saturday night plan. I guess the starting point was that but in terms of storytelling, the film was always about the journey of two teenage brothers. Nothing that happens in the film actually happened in my life, but emotionally almost everything has happened in my life.

Previously, you have assisted on a number of dramas (Mirzapur, Dahaad). Why did you decide to make your directorial debut with this easy-breezy, teenage comedy?

I'm very grateful for the opportunities I've had to learn from my work on those projects. But all of those were other people's projects. I was one of many people working to help those creators achieve their vision. I think with my debut film, I've really had the luck and the opportunity to be able to express my storytelling values and make something that I could be proud of. I've worked on a lot of dramatic as well as light-hearted material in my assisting days. Every experience helped me learn, to be able to craft something as best as I can. There's a book that I come back to a lot. It’s called Making Movies by Sidney Lumet who was a fantastic, legendary filmmaker. In that book he says something that I believe in and now I've experienced it, which is that when you're making a movie, you're just trying to make happy accidents happen. I tried to adopt that approach on this film. This is one of those happy accidents — when things work out a certain way, if you do things the right way. I think that's what the film is also saying to the audience.

Babil Khan and Aadhya Anand in Friday Night Plan.

Aadhya and Medha, what is it like to play high-school kids? Was there some unlearning that was required?

Aadhya: I was studying and writing exams when we were shooting this film so the school thing was very relatable to me. But when it comes to the characters, they were really different. So, I had to pay around that bit.

Medha: Honestly, in my head, I'm still 18 (though I am 25). Personally, I think I really grew up in high school. To be able to play a part which represents that age group comes with a lot of responsibility, because things have changed a lot in the last few years. Class XII students today are very different. They have more exposure to things. One needed an understanding of the nuances of how things have changed, how children now view things, how open they are about talking about sensitive topics. Having those things in place and being a little more self-aware about that was the challenging part. But the fact that I was getting an opportunity to play a high-school kid was so exciting. I wanted to tell the story of this girl who could literally be any one of us.