Dia Mirza: 'A 9 month pregnant TV journalist friend was called for duty at 4.30am in Delhi winter'

Playing an editor in IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, Dia Mirza discusses the importance of maintaining journalistic integrity

While she is amazed to see people flocking to the theatres to watch her debut film, Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein (2001) 23 years after its original release, Dia Mirza is also thrilled to see the audience appreciating her performance in Anubhav Sinha’s latest Netflix series, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack.  The opportunity to revisit a chapter of Indian history, shed light on the advent of television news reporting, and reunite with her frequent collaborator Sinha drew the actor to the series. It marks her fourth collaboration with Sinha, following Dus (2005), Thappad (2020), and Bheed (2022).

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In IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, Mirza plays a news editor transitioning from print journalism to television news, grappling with the challenges women in power face in the emerging industry of 1999. The series centres on the hijacking of an Indian Airlines Flight 814 in December 1999 by militants. The aircraft, en route from Kathmandu to Delhi, was forcibly diverted to Kandahar in Afghanistan after being seized by the hijackers. 

“Through the series, [Sinha] is trying to show that we don’t need to surrender our dignity and value to obtain relevance [with respect to journalists’ roles in media]. We don’t need to arrive at [any conclusion about a situation] without giving the subject the time and value it requires,” Mirza says. She adds that although the incident occurred 25 years ago, the debate remains highly relevant today. Be it the hijacking in 1999 or the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, it is apparent that every piece of information passed needs to be verified as the “situation is sensitive and involves real people and their loved ones. I don’t know if people think about those things in the news anymore,” she wonders.

Mirza, who previously played a journalist in Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007), delves deeper into the core of journalism in this series. She expresses delight in exploring her character Shalini’s dynamic with Amrita Puri’s character, a fierce print reporter. “It was interesting [to explore] the equation I share with Amrita Puri in the news space and the advent of TV journalism. I don’t know if a lot has changed, but at that time, not many women were in positions of power. How they used that power and how they were controlled by the powers at play [is an interesting aspect in this series],” shares the actor. The series also features Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Vijay Varma, Arvind Swami, Patralekhaa, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa, Kanwaljeet Singh, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Sushant Singh, Rajeev Thakur, and Yashpal Sharma.

Having walked a mile in a journalist’s shoes now,  Mirza recalls the hardships reporters endure. “One of my friends, who was a TV journalist and nine months pregnant at the time, told me how she was called for duty at 4.30 on a cold winter morning in the Delhi fog,” she shares.

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