Express News Service
Behind every great actor is a casting director. The latest season of Panchayat is proof. In the OTT series that released earlier this month, it is not only the lead actors, but also the supporting cast that has managed to make life in a small village binge-watch worthy. Panchayat fans have Casting Bay, a Mumbai-based casting agency to thank.
Conceived by actor Abhishek Banerjee and Anmol Ahuja, the agency, since its inception in 2015, has discovered several actors who went on to play memorable characters. Examples range from big banner films such as Rock On 2 and Phillauri, to OTT series such as Mirzapur, and Paatal Lok.
How does casting work? “Casting is about getting the right brief from the director—a visual representation of a character… not the look, but the soul part. If we can project the soul through an actor, that would be correct casting. Many actors would fit the look, but there are few who can connect to the soul of the character,” explains Banerjee.
To achieve the perfect match between an actor’s natural disposition and the soul of the character he is required to play, Casting Bay aims to expand the current talent pool in the industry. “The moment we find the soul of the character in the actor, it escalates the emotion through the performance which adds to the story in totality. That is when we as casting directors feel that we have done our job right,” adds Ahuja. Take for instance, Panchayat’s Prahlad Pandey, the deputy Pradhan of the Phulera village, played by Faisal Malik.
He makes the character his own, getting the audience to roll with laughter with his subtle comic timing throughout the first season. He also stuns viewers with his performance, particularly after the funeral rites of his soldier son in the second season. Initially, Malik, who has been a producer with a few films, was unsure about playing the part. “Faisal was sceptical in the beginning. He didn’t know if he would be able to adjust as an actor, but some convincing from Deepak, the director, did the trick,” Ahuja says.
The agency also experiments with permutations and combinations with actors and characters. The roles of Munna Tripathi and Guddu Bhaiyaa in Mirzapur were originally meant to be played by Ali Fazal and Divyendu Sharma respectively, and not the other way round. It was Banerjee’s suggestion to reverse the roles, and evidently for the good.
Casting Bay is trying to do much more than just recruiting talent. Cognizant of the inequality of opportunities and representation (Vijay Raaz playing a transgender in Gangubai) for certain communities onscreen, the agency has been trying to set an example by thought- ful casting. But they maintain that good acting is supreme. “Acting is more important than anything else––gender, ethnicity… which is why probably Ben Kingsley would play Gandhi instead of an Indian actor. This is why Vijay Raaz would get a role. We will need some time to get an actor to match his talent. We will happily cast a transgender if there are good actors,” Banerjee says, adding, “During auditions for Paatal Lok, we found Mairembam (Ronaldo Singh) from Manipur and she turned out to be good.”
He asserts that the onus of giving opportunities to new actors also lies on the audience, who often only want to watch stars. “In Mary Kom, Priyanka Chopra’s casting was questioned, but had the film been made with a new Northeastern actor, the audience wouldn’t have watched,” he says. But sometimes even the best intentions don’t work out, like when the agency was looking to cast a gay man for Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhan.
“Most gay actors we knew said they cannot come out of the closet,” Banerjee says. But Banerjee, Ahuja and Casting Bay are far from giving up. “We want to continue what we’re doing and reach out to people in the most remote locations. It’s a huge country and we need to have more actors, and we are working day and night to find them,” Banerjee says.
