There was no mistaking the ‘bromance’ between actor Jisshu Sengupta and director Suparn S. Varma when The Telegraph met them at The Oberoi Grand recently. In town to promote their new series The Trial — which drops on Disney+Hotstar today — the fun duo had a blast during this chat. The Trial, which stars Kajol in the lead and is an adaptation of The Good Wife, has Jisshu playing Kajol’s husband, with Suparn (who has recent directing credits like The Family Man Season 2 and Rana Naidu and also produced the Manoj Bajpayee winner Banda), directing the series.

First things first. Suparn, what made you want to adaptThe Good Wife?

Suparn S. Varma: I loved the original, which I had seen long back. Also, I was given a free hand in adapting it ... I could change the (court) cases, do away with the jury system, I wanted to change Noyonika’s (played by Kajol) more because in India, when a woman suffers, she is victim-shamed. That changed her trajectory completely (from Alicia Florrick, played by Julianna Margulies in the original). I had the luxury of knowing what happens with the characters and that helped me in layering them in the first season itself.

Casting Kajol in a role which is completely different from what she has done before excited me. She has always been the heroine who the hero is running after through the whole film. In The Trial, within the first five minutes, her husband (played by Jisshu) cheats on her, she slaps him and her romantic life hits rock-bottom. That’s a side which we have never seen her enact. That was one of the starting points for me, which enabled me to delve deeper into the other relationships in the show.

Above everything else, what I saw as potential to get into is the fact that every marriage or every long-term relationship is dying a thousand deaths every single day. You see the possibilities of what it could have been and the person you love is changing every day. Sometimes they evolve, sometimes they compromise and sometimes they don’t become who they were... sometimes you don’t remain what you were.

That you stay together despite that could be a choice that makes you happy or makes you die a thousand deaths. You are always looking at ‘what if?’ It’s a constant battle for both partners. There is a line in the show where Kajol says: ‘Nibhaana padta hain.’ When you come to that space, life becomes one big compromise. You are choosing it out of habit, investment of so many years.... So casting Kajol, in a way, was to look at her at a point where all her films have ended. Raj and Simran walk into the sunset... but what after that? We haven’t seen something like this on our screens in a while now. Nothing is black-and-white in the world and on our show.

Jisshu, is Suparn so full of verve and energy even on set?

Jisshu Sengupta: One hundred per cent! If the call time for shoot is 8am, he will be jumping around on set from 6am! (Laughs) Even in the most intense emotional scenes, as actors, we needed a certain energy to perform. There was a scene between me and Kajol which was very difficult for both of us to enact. It was a very serious scene and the kind of energy Suparn gave us for that scene was incredible. I have worked with some very energetic directors, but he is something else.

Suparn, what’s the secret to this energy?

Suparn: I was born this way! Actually, this is happiness. The set is my playground and I get paid to play on it. For me, this is not a profession, though I do treat it professionally. If I can’t be happy here then I don’t think anything in life will make me happy.

The joy of creating, the joy of collaborating with like-minded people. This job requires passion. From the gaffer who sits at the top and goes up there at six in the morning. He has no AC the whole day, but he is driven by passion. This is not just about bringing in money. He could do a job which is more comfortable, but he chooses not to.Jisshu: Any kind of art form... we are here for the love of it. Yes, money comes with it, let’s not deny that. We all want to earn money, but there is huge passion..Suparn: Also, madness! We are all mad people! There is nobody who is sane in this business (laughs). Also, you need to be persistent and shameless because failure is literally our shadow. We can work like crazy for the next two years and fail in one day. And then to dust it off and move forward demands a lot.

Suparn, what went into cracking so many genres together in The Trial and making it a cohesive whole?

Suparn: That was a fun challenge. This is about a marriage unravelling, it’s about a relationship from the past catching up with you and you look back and say: ‘What if?’ The show also emphasises that the choices that you make at work may be very different from what you make in your personal life. Noyonika moves from a black-and-white life into a very grey zone.

Jisshu, what went into playing your character and did you pitch in with suggestions?

Jisshu: I have worked in several industries by now and have come across many directors who have their own set notions about how a scene should be played out. Which is also fair in a way because the director has already seen the film or series in his head, long before the actor has even gone to the set.

There are very few directors — Suparn is one of them — who will allow an actor to explore. He will say: ‘Tu dikha tu kya karna chahta hain.’ If it aligns with the sketch which he has done in his head, he allows that. He encourages you to push your barriers.

Kajol in The Trial, streaming on Disney+Hotstar from today The Telegraph

How does one adapt a show like this to the Indian context and yet keep it universal?

Suparn: You take the soul of the story and that forms your basic skeleton. The idea is that here is this woman whose husband is involved in a public scandal and she has to restart her life from scratch, and she goes back to working in a firm owned by someone who still holds a candle for her.

I started developing it from there and I used the beats that the original had, but added my own flavour. I tweaked the screenplay and as I started changing the reactions and motivations of the characters, I automatically started entering a zone which is completely fresh. While adapting a story, one has to reach certain milestones and markers, but the journey of each take on set for us has been unique.

Jisshu, what is it with you being a horrible husband on Disney+Hotstar shows? You were a very terrible husband in Season 2 of Criminal Justice....

Jisshu: I was only being approached for the husband type characters! (Laughs) So my team and I decided that I won’t accept these parts anymore. But the day I met Suparn and he told me the story, I was bowled over. By the way, he and I were wearing the same Tom Ford specs that day and he took one look at it and told me I am in! (Laughs)

Also, I am a humongous fan of Kajol’s. I told her that the first day and I even told her I had worked with her mother (Tanuja). And she told me: ‘I know that, and she thinks you are a very good boy. But you are not a boy!’ (Laughs)

Suparn, was the idea always to call it The Trial?

Suparn: We planned to call it ‘The Good Wife’, but the original is on a rival (streaming) platform and when you search ‘The Good Wife’, it takes you to that. We would have potentially lost a large chunk of audiences via search engines. We have created our own flavour in this show and we kept thinking of names for the longest time. Every time, the brief would be that this is about the trials and tribulations of relationships, trials and tribulations of love, trials and tribulations of marriage... so we decided take out the tribulations bit and just call it The Trial.

I guess ‘Pativrata patni’ didn’t make the cut....

Suparn: We had lots of interesting, fun names! Let’s not even go there! (Laughs)