Season 3 of Four More Shots Please! — the smash-hit Amazon Prime Video web series that focuses on what women want — has just been announced, but its director Nupur Asthana is still on a high after the success of Season 2, now airing on the streaming platform. The Telegraph caught up with the Calcutta-bred filmmaker — she has directed films like Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge and Bewakoofiyaan, besides writing and directing the seminal TV series Hip Hip Hurray — on why women need to tell women stories and her Calcutta memories.

(L-R) Sayani Gupta, Bani J, Maanvi Gagroo and Kirti Kulhari in Season 2 of Four More Shots Please! Still from the show

What’s been the predominant reaction to Season 2 of Four More Shots Please!?

What really stood out for me is that so many women feel that they can relate to the characters in some way or the other, with some emotion, some challenge or some struggle that my protagonists are going through. It may not be the same struggle or challenge, but they identify with the emotion of it, and that’s something that’s really wonderful to know. There have been messages on my social media, like for instance this mother who wrote in that after she finished watching the season, she and her daughter went back and rewatched Episodes 7 and 8 so that they could ‘prolong’ the series! (Laughs) Imagine a mother in her late-40s sitting and watching it with her 20-year-old daughter... that’s just lovely, ya. There have been messages like, ‘Oh, we wanted a couple more episodes’.

You hadn’t directed Season 1, which became a huge hit. Did the nerves ease up a bit going into an already successful show?

I saw Season 1 about two-and-a-half months before it released. Rangita (Pritish Nandy), the creator of the show, showed it to me and I said ‘yes’ to Season 2 based on my gut instinct, not knowing whether it would be a hit or a flop. It was women-centric, it was bold, it was set in Mumbai... of course I wanted to be a part of the story. I wanted to be a part of a narrative of four strong girls (played by Sayani Gupta, Kirti Kulhari, Bani J and Maanvi Gagroo) living life on their own terms.

I had a very frank conversation with Rangita and Ishita (Nandy, the show’s associate creator) and they were totally with me when I said I would like to do a few more things in Season 2... like make the girls more authentic, more real, more relatable. Little more depth and layering, focus on more contemporary issues that women deal with on a daily basis. I also wanted to bring in Mumbai as a character. Otherwise, it could be just a show about any women anywhere in the world, right? Mumbai has its own identity and these girls are an integral part of that.

Rangita was happy to encourage me incredibly and say, ‘Just fly with it’. I tried to bring in a few nuances, whether it was at shoot, like making my DoP (director of photography, Neha Parti Matiyani), bring in a visual style that was not only dynamic but also emotionally soaring. In the workshop that I did with the actors, they understood quite quickly that with Season 2, I wanted to cut closer to the bone. I wanted the characters to be a little more immersive and because I was bringing in my own directorial vision, tone, voice and style to the show, I kind of managed to slip in a lot of things while shooting.

At the end of the day, the subtext of the show is a search of self, a search for one’s own identity. Like when Siddhi (Maanvi Gagroo) says, ‘Abhi abhi toh main khud se mili hoon, main kaise kisi ki girlfriend bann sakti hoon?’ So the whole thing is about self-acceptance, loving who you are as a person. We all worked very hard at every level to bring in these nuances. The fact is that you can be strong and mature at your workplace and yet you can be very vulnerable and confused in your personal life, and that’s what a part of the show depicts with Anjana (Kirti Kulhari)... we all have faced sexism, mansplaining.... The girls make mistakes, they fall, they stumble... but the point is that everyone in the audience wants them to get back up and walk on their feet again.

So yes, I went in with my gut instinct, I had my own material that I dissected... I was in the writers’ room all along and at the end of the day, we were all on the same page. For me, it’s always important to know what are the themes that I am exploring and why I am saying what I am saying.

Do you relate to any of the four women or is a little bit of each somewhere in you?

I think a little bit of each. But Siddhi’s life is not my life at all. I come from a middle-class family where there was a lot of stress on education and career. But I am on board with how she looks at life... that’s lovely. There’s a little bit of me in all the characters I work with.

A lot of men are also pretty hooked to the show that’s all about women...

I am hoping more men watch the show! (Laughs) Who doesn’t want to get into the mind of a woman and get to know what she likes, what she wants, what makes her tick... I would like to know what a guy is thinking! So I would watch a show that has a man as its protagonist and I hope men would want to do the same when it comes to a show about women.

I always treat my characters with compassion, whether they are men or women and on this show, we haven’t demonised the men at all. We have treated them without any judgment. On this show, everyone, irrespective of gender, makes mistakes. Who wants to see black-and-white characters anyway? It’s the grey that’s more attractive. I would want men to see the greys in women because that’s the real woman. For so long, we have stuck to a narrative of showing women as either black or white... the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. It’s only in the last few years that it’s changed, and we are pushing it further on the show.

There’s a lot of female energy on the show, both in front of and behind the camera. What was that like?

Fantastic! When I was an assistant director, the only women on set would be the actress and the hairdresser, apart from me. I am talking about the ’90s, before Hip Hip Hurray, and there were no women on set. I would try so hard to blend in... I would wear loose jeans, loose T-shirts, no make-up... people didn’t even want to hire women at that time. I was fortunate to work with a wonderful independent filmmaker like Ketan Mehta, and I didn’t have to worry much.

But we’ve come a long way since then. Now we have women across departments. It’s so nice to be able to talk unfiltered, there’s a sense of camaraderie.... Once women get to a certain point in their career here, they tend to hire more women, and that’s wonderful. Rangita and I run a very democratic set... everyone is welcome to have an opinion and I keep the door open for them to say, ‘This is trash, this is good’.

But you aren’t going back to direct Season 3...

I need to move on, I need a new challenge. I am working on a feature script that’s based on a book. I am in conversation for a few other shows and the next few months will be spent in development.

You spent a part of your growing-up years in Calcutta. What was that like?

My memories are crystal clear. I lived there till I was 14. I lived in New Alipore and studied in St. Teresa’s (Secondary School) Kidderpore. We moved around so much after we left Calcutta that I only went back to the city in 2012. I went to K.C. Das and Flurys... and almost passed out! (Laughs) My dream is to make a film in Bengali because I can speak Bengali, my favourite food is Bengali. I don’t know if I will ever be able to but my one big dream is to make a film in Bengali... in Calcutta (smiles).