Hansal Mehta: I relive their journeys through my stories

Pratik Gandhi in Scam 1992

Hansal Mehta believes the most powerful stories are found in the everyday life. After giving us stories of real-life characters in Shahid (2013), Aligarh (2015) and Omerta (2017), the director has now explored the rise and fall of stockbroker Harshad Mehta in Scam 1992. "I think real-life characters find me; I like to relive their journeys through the stories I tell," begins Mehta.

The director wanted to make a film that demystified the 1992 stock market scam as early as 2012. However, the plan was put on the back-burner as he trained his focus on Shahid. A call from Sameer Nair of Applause Entertainment in 2017 made him revisit the subject. "A story like this has much to say and the long-format storytelling does justice to it," he says of the SonyLIV show that is based on Debashis Basu and Sucheta Dalal's book, The Scam: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away.

Ask him if frequent collaborator Rajkummar Rao was his first choice for the protagonist, and Mehta says, "I had spoken to Rajkummar, but he was busy. It gave me an opportunity to work with Pratik [Gandhi] who is a phenomenal and authentic actor. As a Gujarati man, I have been able to explore the world that I am familiar with. I spent 80-odd days of the shoot talking in Gujarati."

Mehta is unperturbed that the story will also be brought alive in the Abhishek Bachchan-starrer The Big Bull. He believes that the vision of the two projects will differ despite the same theme. "They have made a film while this is a series; naturally, the form of storytelling will be different. I am looking forward to watching The Big Bull, I want to see what they have done with the story."

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