Abhinay Deo Reveals He Taught Brown Star Karisma Kapoor How To Roll A Cigarette – Exclusive

The new Zee5 series,  features Karisma Kapoor as a Kolkata police officer named Rita Brown who assigned a difficult case. The brilliant but slightly jaded Rita isn’t the model officer of law but she gets the job done. Director Abhinay Deo spoke about casting Karisma for the role and how he wanted her to be an unconventional cop. The filmmaker shared that he taught Karisma, who is not a smoker, to smoke and roll a cigarette for the part. The gritty thriller set in Kolkata premieres on June 5.

In an interview with Zoom, Abhinay shared that he and producers did have to convince   to take up the part. He already had a vision in his mind of how the character would look and behave, wearing no makeup and almost on the brink of collapse. Abhinay explained, “The character, which was very intense in nature, [was] someone who is constantly smoking and drinking. It was not the typical cop that I was wanting to portray. We wanted someone who actually is not the first choice that comes to mind. Which is why I think Karishma was the perfect person that we wanted. She’s always done very bubbly and interesting roles, barring a couple of films like Fiza. But apart from those, she’s always done this extremely glamorous and her image is also like that. I always loved to kind of push the envelope to the other side completely. For me, there was a no-brainer. Karishma was just the right person.”

When asked about the selling point for the Murder Mubarak actress, Abhinay shared that she had never really played a character like this before. Karisma also knew that the role of Rita Brown was an author-backed one. He said, “[Rita] is just such a fantastic role that the selling was about the other stuff. Okay, you need to start learning how to smoke. She doesn’t smoke. I wanted her to roll a cigarette. I roll a cigarette to smoke. So, that’s why I taught her.”

The 24 filmmaker went to say that he kept the brief very simple about the role. He told her that she should not look like a cop. He added, “You should look like you are about to fall down. But at the same time, when you get down to business, you are no less than any man could ever be. Let’s blur the line between this is a man’s job or a woman’s job. Let’s make this your job. And that was very clear in my head as well: that she needs to be in a certain way.”

Moreover, he felt that they had talks on set not about what she should be doing but rather about what she should not be doing. “We spent a lot of time talking about how you will not react like this to a particular issue. You will react completely differently, and you will react to the opposite. She is a fabulous actress and such a senior actress at that. I didn’t tell her how to do her part. I wanted to just point out the parts that she should not be doing in it. And I think that really helped us shape the character really well,” he concluded

The Hindi series is based on the novel City of Death by Abheek Barua. The Zee5 series also features Jisshu Sengupta, Surya Sharma, Soni Razdan, Helen Khan, Shaan, Meghna Malik, Ajinkya Deo and Paresh Pahuja.