Black Warrant director Vikramaditya Motwane says he was sure that a narrative showcasing the life of a jailer at Tihar would make for a good screen adaptation
Vikramaditya Motwane
With each new work, Vikramaditya Motwane seeks to explore a new world. After serving viewers with the cybercrime thriller CTRL, fronted by Ananya Panday, Motwane takes audiences inside the Tihar Jail to narrate the story of an unlikely jailer in yesterday’s Netflix release, Black Warrant. The co-creator, co-writer, and co-director of the show starring Zahan Kapoor, Motwane brings for fans of prison dramas a screen adaptation of the book, Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer, by journalist Sunetra Choudhury and former superintendent at Tihar Jail, Sunil Gupta.
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“It’s a riveting book and tells you something that you have no information about. It was interesting because no one has ever [considered a] jailer’s perspective. All the stuff we have seen about prisons is from movies [alone]. [When you read] Sunil Gupta’s stories, and the incredible situations [he finds himself in], you are sold. I knew it would make for great drama because it has a great character arc,” Motwane says.
Zahan Kapoor (R) in Black Warrant
However, adapting a 200-pager with a narrative that spans 35 years is no mean feat. Motwane initially considered recreating the book “exactly as it is.” “We wanted to make a limited series, but that would become very episodic. So, we thought about building Sunil’s life from the beginning and showing several aspects—what his motivation to take the job was, who was in his family, and what his day-to-day life in the jail looked like. He is not an observer, but a part of the story. Deciding how to flesh out this character was the challenge. We had a lot of conversations with Mr Gupta [and unravelled] things that aren’t in the book.”
Motwane took no more than five seconds to zero in on his leading man Zahan, grandson of late Bollywood icon Shashi Kapoor. “I didn’t know he was auditioning. The moment I saw him, I thought he was great. In the first five seconds of the audition, I could see the uncertainty in his eyes. His audition was the first scene of the series, where his character is seen interviewing for a job. In a way, that was apt, because, like his character, he too was [applying for his job]. Zahan comes with a wealth of knowledge about characters and drama. More than acting, I used to discuss character arcs with him. After table reads, we would sit and discuss the missing beats.” The series also features Rahul Bhat, Paramvir Cheema, and Anurag Thakur.
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