Season 2 of Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein, Netflix’s noir thriller series, has got off to a great start and Tahir Raj Bhasin, who plays the lead role of Vikrant, couldn’t be happier. t2 chatted with the Mardaani and Chhichhore actor on the moral ambiguity of his character and what makes him believe he is living the dream.
The second season of Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein has been received very well. You must be over the moon!
There is massive relief. When you have set a benchmark for Season 1, there are expectations. I felt some of those expectations when I was on set shooting for Season 2. My only hope before the release of Season 2 was that people give it its due as an independent season and don’t compare (it to the first season).
I am so happy that the audience has not only watched it as an independent season, some have loved it as much as Season 1 and a lot of the audience has also liked it more than Season 1. That is testament to the fact that we have broken the Season 2 curse. A follow-up invariably always falls short of expectations and we have smashed that myth. I am taking in the success of Season 2... it is a much bigger tidal wave than I had presumed it to be.
The biggest validation was when someone told me: ‘I really like the Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein franchise.’ Till then, I had always thought of it as Part 1 and Part 2. That was something that made me happy, that this is being seen as a franchise.
Also, the audience has been surprised by the character arc. Vikrant (Tahir’s character) has gone into extremely grey territory and now has taken the reins in his hands and got into a darker space than what Season 1 was. A lot of the feedback I have got after the latest season has been about how the character has dealt with the moral ambiguity that faces him and the fact that there is such a delicate balance between the vulnerability that the character had in the first season versus the reality of what his life has become right now.
Vikrant is a man caught in extraordinary circumstances. He chops a man he has killed into pieces and yet the audience has to like him and empathise with him. What went into creating that dichotomous balance?
A lot of it was in the script. There is a lot of vulnerability. He started off being an ordinary guy with a heart of gold who is now caught in extraordinary circumstances. The show questions how far a person will go when pushed against the wall, especially when a power structure is against you. What I had to bring to it was vulnerability because the ‘action’ will just say: ‘Shoot so and so or go to the bathroom and kill someone.’ As an actor, you have to remember where the character started from. So when he performs a certain action, no matter how violent, dramatic or spectacular it is, he needs to experience it as an innocent man with zero experience.
The superb thing about the writing is how it constantly juxtaposes a man who wants to take these drastically violent and morally questionable steps but then has no idea how to go about it. He is not some kind of James Bond who comes in with a plan and then executes it with perfect finesse. He often goes to YouTube to ask for help. He is often stumbling into creating more problems than what he sought out to resolve. What makes it enjoyable is that he is a flawed hero.
Even though he goes over to the dark side, did you find Vikrant identifiable in any respect in S2?
On a simplistic level, he is a guy in a world that is alien to him. I related to that because that is how I felt when I first came to Bombay. I wanted to make a mark and I had a utopian vision of what it entailed. But that is what an artiste’s task is — to take a small experience from your own life and magnify it to the demands of the script. In a small way, that is where my life and Vikrant’s life would intersect.
Vikrant’s circumstances, like you pointed out, are dramatic and there is so much pulp in the writing. He finds himself doing the same things he despised in Season 1. A lot of it is there in the voiceover and in the inner monologue that he has. Like at one point, his voiceover says: ‘Yeh sawaal nahin hain ki uss ne kooda ya usey dhakela gaya; sawaal yeh hain ki uss din ek aadmi insaan bann ne se reh gaya.’ There is also another line which has caught on with the audience, which goes: ‘Koi bhi insaan haiwaan paida nahi hota, haalaat usey haiwaan bana dete hain.’ There is a constant reference to him being a victim of circumstances.
How has playing Vikrant over two seasons contributed to your skill set as an actor?
When you grow as a person, you contribute to the character and then the character contributes to your life... it is a two-way street. I had never done a Part Two or a sequel before Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein. That, in itself, was a new experience and had its own challenges. One of them was that the two seasons were shot two years apart and in that time, we had all moved on to different projects... you travel, you meet people, you have life happen to you.... A very beautiful thing I read recently is that a piece of art encapsulates who you were emotionally in your journey of life at that point in time.
The irony is that Season 1 and Season 2 are connected... Season 2 picks up exactly where Season 1 stops. But in between that moment of Vikrant getting the phone call at the end of the first season demanding ₹100-crore as ransom for his wife Purva (Aanchal G. Singgh) and waking up in Season 2, two years had passed. The challenge was to keep the sincerity and earnestness of Vikrant in Season 1 and also bring in the depth of the good experiences, the bad experiences, the medium experiences that you have had in life over these two years. However, a lot of this is great to verbalise in hindsight... it is not something that you are consciously doing at that point.
Take us through that scene in the bathroom where Vikrant kills a man and proceeds to chop him into pieces. It is a scene of huge impact and marks a turn in Vikrant’s character. What was it like filming it?
You have identified absolutely correctly that this is a turning point for Vikrant. He has to do that out of compulsion because Shikha’s (Shweta Tripathi Sharma) life is on the line. The love of his life, the safety of his family are on the line and he has to take that decision. We knew that it was a key point in the script and the planning of it went about in the manner of how it is done in theatre. We met a few times before the shoot and we rehearsed the action because OTT is about economising on time and telling the story in the quickest, most efficient way possible. That entire scene could either play out in 40 minutes or in just eight minutes. We chose the latter and then had to focus on how to convey such myriad emotions within that space and time.
But on the day of shoot, you tend to forget all of that (laughs). You then have to just go by your gut. I was excited seeing that scene on screen because visually, it is very well shot. Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein is a typical noir thriller. There is suspense, thrill, murder, protection of a loved one... thematically, it is an actor’s dream come true.
It has been one solid project for you after another, especially in the streaming space. Would you say that this Delhi boy is truly living his dream in Bombay?
I am. I am fortunate with the kind of directors and the parts I have got. I have got to explore variety. My last project, Sultan of Delhi, was directed by Milan Luthria and is a period gangster, very action-heavy drama where we are running on top of trains and firing guns. Yeh Kaali Kaali Kaali Aankhein is a passionate romantic drama which has got absurdist themes. Season 2 is shot so poetically. Just based on visuals, one may think it is a rom-com, but, of course, it is not. What is interesting about (director) Sidharth Sengupta’s work is that he will put a character in a space which visually shows you something but emotionally is in a very, very different space.
Yes, I am living the dream because the idea is to do quality work over quantity and within that to try and have as much variety as possible.
Your Instagram bio asserts on ‘authenticity over approval’. How far have you been able to maintain that in career and in life?
I try to. I won’t claim to always be successful. Since that is my bio, it is mostly applicable to the social media space, where the tendency is to follow trends or to give out only high points in your life and to live life with a filter all the time.
When it comes to work, it is a balancing act. This is an expensive art form and you have to keep in mind that when you are signing on, it is a collaboration where you bring the artistic aspect in but you also have to understand that the audience needs to be entertained. It is a constant balancing act between idealism and realism.
