Vikramaditya Motwane On Changing Culture Of Film Sets, Ananya Panday, His Fitness Regimen & More

Director, producer and screenwriter Vikramaditya Motwane falls into that category of film-makers whose entire library of work is both diverse and impressive - his directorial debut was Udaan (2010), which he followed up with movies like Lootera (2013), Trapped (2017), and Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (2018). Motwane has also been assistant to Sanjay Leela Bhansali, collaborating with him on the films Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) and Devdas (2002). Netflix's first Indian series Sacred Games was created by Motwane along with Anurag Kashyap.

At a recent event in the city that had discussions on the changing fabric of films with regards to gender, we spoke to him several issues. Excerpts:

On women getting lead roles

Compared to where we were 15 years ago, industry has witnessed progressive evolution. One size- fits all does not apply anymore. Women have been leads in many shows and movies. To be able to have women as leads for a lot of content is a sign of progress change.

On POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) awareness increasing on film sets

When working with Netflix, there was a woman who held sessions which was like a workshop for the entire crew on sexual harassment at the workplace, who would educate everyone on facets like ‘this is the way to talk, this is not the way to talk.’ The first time it happened, I remember we were wondering what really is going, since something like this had never happened before. There was a lot of eye rolling happening as people were wondering what is going on. But what we've done is, even though it might not be a Netflix project, we've kind of carried doing that before every project we get into for the entire crew. So that once you are doing it every time there's no more eye rolling, people know this is going to happen. By the third time they're listening and into it.

With Netflix, the lady would either be on a call or face to face. She would explain to the crew what counts as harassment and what does not. These things are kosher, while these are absolutely not. So it was all example based, and also very helpful.

How the idea for CTRL (Netflix) came about

I think the opportunity came first, there's a format of movie called Screen Life, like Unfriended: Dark Web (2018) and Searching (2018), basically about this voyeuristic look into people’s lives. So the producer of Searching actually called me up and said would we want to do some films like these in India- and i said, ‘Hell yeah, I'm interested.’ Then I spoke to Avinash Sampath, who's written AK vs AK (2020). He was the first person I called. I said, let's talk because this is a good opportunity. And then through these ideas, we came up with this one, which started off as being felt like a futuristic kind of sci-fi idea about woman has a breakup, gets this AI app that helps her erase her memories and becomes her best friend. Then as we went on, we realized that there's so much we can say about social media and influencer culture. The need to be validated, the need to be online. So a lot of our own feelings came in after that.

The title

It was initially called Control R, which is a keyboard shortcut for Control Refresh.

Casting Ananya Panday

She was great in Gehraiyaan (2022), I really liked what she had done there and thought she was fantastic. She fit the profile for Ctrl so well. She's 25 (was 23 when i cast her), young, social media savvy also somebody got trolled a lot. So And I think she's done a fab job.

His fitness regimen

I am at the age right now where I have to really look at what I eat, more importantly than what I do. I do work out five days a week at least. But also, I think once you get to your 40s, you have to be pretty careful of what goes in, not so much of what you expend. As long as you're in what they call calorie deficit.