‘Leila’ Is an Exaggeration of Things that Exist Today: Siddharth

I visited the sets of the now streaming Netflix original series Leila in Delhi in November last year. Actor Siddharth, who plays Bhanu in the series, spared a few minutes in between his shoot to speak to me about Leila and his experience of working with 3 different directors on a single script. Here’s our brief chat:

Hi Siddharth, welcome to The Quint, we are on the sets of Leila and we know that it’s set in the future. But you’ve been shooting in Old Delhi and parts of NOIDA, give us a feel of what the setting of this world is?

Siddharth: I think primarily, it’s best to clarify what we’re addressing is dystopia in this, there’s no science fiction, it’s not a period piece in that sense where you are going by the technology of the time. I think identifying our present day itself as a dystopian society, where things are what they are, with very specific restrictions of what one can and cannot do, so it’s set in a not so distant future where similar restrictions exist, where you can or cannot do certain things. So, it’s about the universe that it’s set in and setting a human story against that universe. And that makes it exciting because you have the larger socio-political climate against which the show is set, but what’s more important and what’s going to take you through the season is the human interaction and the interplay between the people that have been established in this climate.

Given that the world we are living now in actually, do you think it’s not so futuristic or not so unrealistic to think about a world like that, I mean seeing the ghettoisation that we’re seeing around us already.

Siddharth: So, I believe the future of not just this country but of any society is going to hold on to certain things that exist right now, so I don’t think today’s political climate is chalk and cheese different from 10 years ago. I’m not from that school of thought. I do believe that there’s always going to be the haves and the have nots and as long as those two categories exist, you are in dystopia. So this is about heightening that have and have not situation. So, in this case it is a divide based on purity, so those who are considered pure and those who are considered not. So that’s what creates the conflict in the universe.

It’s easy to argue that it’s like that today, but by that definition no future can be that different that it has nothing to do with the present that we live in today. I would say that it’s an exaggerated version of certain things that exist in society today. But, more than that it becomes unique because it has its specific rules and regulations, its rights and wrongs and that’s what makes that world unique.

How different was the experience of working on a series  compared to say a 2 hour film that you produce at the end of let’s say 30 or 40 days of shoot?

Siddharth: I think the interesting way to approach this is, it’s based on the book right? So, any book that’s adapted to screen, generally the difference is that in film format it is 2 or 2 and a half hours, so you can take a little bit of the essence of the book and then you make it screen friendly and you make it into a screenplay. In this case, the duration is a bit longer, but more importantly how the audience consumes it is completely different. So, when you make a film, you are talking to a captive audience and audience that’s paying money to sit in a space and be given content. In this case you are giving them a little more democracy. They can watch it maybe in fits and starts of 10-20-30 mins at a stretch or they can do the classic binge watch and watch all of it together.

So, it’s very difficult to factor those things while approaching the meter of the performance but having said that once it’s camera rolling, there’s no difference really because you are performing a character and the camera is rolling. So, it’s about micro and macro, in a macro level a lot of things are different, but on a micro level when you are addressing the scene or the shot, it’s pretty much the same as any other job.

But you’re also working with 3 different directors on this one script. How has that experience been? Do they have different approaches or do you have to wire yourself differently when you’re working with each of them?

Siddharth: It’s very complicated to be honest with you, in the sense that I expected it to be far more challenging than it was. So, I worked with 3 different filmmakers each of them uniquely different in their own right. I can tell you they are all completely different from each other in the way they directed us, but they are still directing the same characters. So, that was really interesting because I feel at the end of it that we were directed by one person. And that’s something that both the format and the nature of the script kind of leads to that result. It’s been incredibly satisfying because we inherited each director or let’s say the director inherited us.

So, Deepa Mehta started off, I worked with her before on a feature no less, and she has a specific rhythm and she runs a set a certain way. And we identified and understood the foundations of our characters under her, and then we were passed on to the next director, and he inherited the set as it was. And then further from Shankar to Pawan. Shankar is a Zen master, the way he operates on set and he’s also a DoP and so he’s a technician and he runs the set in a certain way. Pawan is very indie and has a different set of ideas to work with. But, what is common was two things,  one is the script, the second was the DoP, so he was also inherited as the part of the parcel. And I think he was my biggest takeaway from the show, because I have worked with some of India’s top cinematographical talents and watching this young guy from abroad come and shoot India the way he has shot it really gives it a different edge.

I’d say it’s very satisfying to work with 3 directors almost to the point that I am a starting to think should I get 3 directors for my next feature film? But then I know how crazy complicated that would be, and so yeah, that was the most unique part to be working with three completely different talents on the same content.