Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane has opened up on why he preferred not to cast a star in his recent web series Jubilee. He also assured fans that season two of the show is currently being written. Jubilee features Aditi Rao Hydari, Prosenjit Chatterjee and Ram Kapoor, and is currently streaming on Prime Video. (Also read| Vikramaditya Motwane’s Jubilee: Of cinema, by cinema and for cinema)
Created by Soumik Sen and Vikramaditya, Jubilee features Aparshakti Khurana, Aditi Rao Hydari, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Wamiqa Gabbi, Ram Kapoor, Sidhant Gupta and Nandish Sandhu in key roles.
Talking about the reason behind casting “non-stars” in Jubilee, Vikramaditya told DNA, “Some of the cast members had to be newcomers because you don’t know who these people are. You want them to succeed. They are not of the stature as the people above them. In my mind, that is the subtlety of casting. Had I cast Ranbir Kapoor as Jay Khanna, he would have been great for the role but would he have really brought the struggle of being in the refugee camp as an unknown face? It’s a fine line. Maybe it doesn’t matter but for me it did.”
He added, “We are writing a season two. Amazon will trigger that when they do that. That’s a business decision they take but we are writing it. What we are writing, I can’t tell you.”
All the lead characters – Aparshakti, Siddhant and Aditi have shades of grey in Jubilee. Aparshakti had earlier told ANI about his role, “There is a weird real-life connection between me and my character, Binod. I started my career as a costume designer at the age of 21-22 but I always wanted to switch careers and work on TV as a host. So, I joined a television channel as a costume stylist and worked my way through and landed an audition as a TV host for a show. Luckily, I was selected for the same and my journey started from there. And in Jubilee, too, I start my career as an employee at Srikant Roy’s (Prosenjit Chatterjee) studio where I work as an assistant but secretly aspire to be an actor. So that little connection was a motivation to work on this role better. That’s what worked for me.”
Produced by Andolan Films in association with Reliance Entertainment and Phantom Studios, Jubilee tells the story of the yesteryear Hindi film industry, love, desire, aspiration, guilt, dreams, and dark secrets of the film stars.