Alia Bhatt & Shakun Batra in Conversation With Team Narcos: Mexico

‘Narcos: Mexico’ hits Netflix on 16 November.

(From L to R) Shakun Batra, Diego Luna, Eric Newman, Alia Bhatt and Michael Pena at the panel discussion for Narcos: Mexico.

(Photo courtesy: Twitter)

One of the shows that significantly raised Netflix’s popularity globally was Narcos, which is now ready for a new season. Titled Narcos: Mexico it was initially intended to be the fourth season of the show but is now a companion series that focuses on the illegal drug trading in Mexico. It features a new cast with actors Michael Pena and Diego Luna in the lead roles as Kiki Camarena and Félix Gallardo.

Before its release on 16 November, Netflix held a panel discussion which had the two actors along with showrunner Eric Newman in conversation with director Shakun Batra and Alia Bhatt. The choice of interviewers probably stems from the fact that Shakun and Alia have been reportedly roped in from an original series for Netflix, based on the life of Osho. Speculation is rife that Aamir Khan would play the role of Osho while Alia would play Ma Anand Sheela, but there has been no official confirmation.

Shakun Batra, Diego Luna, Eric Newman, Alia Bhatt and Michael Pena at the panel discussion for Narcos: Mexico.(Photo courtesy: Twitter)

Shakun began by talking about how Narcos was one of those shows that was absolutely binge-worthy and got him completely hooked. Alia however made a confession. “I was a little late to the Narcos bandwagon, but everyone kept referring it to me and I had to watch it,” she said.

Both Shakun and Alia quizzed showrunner Eric Newman about his background and what lead to him produce Narcos. He said,

I started out as a film producer and then moved to television. At that time it wasn’t great to be on television but now the content is just amazing, and a lot of those shows were from Netflix.

Eric Newman, Showrunner, Narcos.

Lead actor Michael Pena spoke about how he had worked on movies like Ant-Man earlier and said that working on Narcos was like entering a completely different headspace for him. When asked about the layered storytelling of the show, Eric said, “I realised that in a two hour movie it’s not possible for the audience to look at a man as anything as bad.”

He went on to say that the show gave him a chance to explore those characters completely and hence made Pablo Escobar such a loved character. Alia agreed and said, “When I watched the show, I loved Pablo - I wanted to be his friend. In my head I was like, why am I feeling this because he’s a horrible man.”

The authenticity of the show also came from the locations that they shot in and Eric said that they didn’t want to compromise on that. He said that many channels shot shows depicting Latin America in places like Arizona but they chose to shoot in Mexico and Colombia.

The panel ended with Alia and Shakun trying to speak in Spanish and failing miserably at it.

Narcos: Mexico will be streaming on Netflix from 16 November.