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Exclusive | Building 'Kohrra 2': 800 Auditions, That Lived-In Punjab Feel and Jaideep Ahlawat's Cameo
Created by Sudip Sharma, the Netflix show is headlined by Mona Singh and Barun Sobti.
It’s difficult to shake off Sudip Sharma's Kohrra 2. The heaviness—of the people, the system and the sense of a place closing in on itself—outlives the final frame. That world is the result of careful, department-by-department design, which has already made the Mona Singh-Barun Sobti-led show among the most acclaimed titles in recent times.
The new season—directed by Sharma and Faizal Rehman and written by Gunjit Chopra, Diggi Sisodia and Sharma—expands the geography and the ensemble without altering the show’s interior gaze. The investigation now moves across Punjab, with a cast of 150 actors forming its core.
THR India spoke to casting director Nikita Grover, Director of Photography Isshaan Ghosh and Production Designer Mukund Gupta about what went behind building the second season from the ground up.
Casting | Three Months On The Road And 800 Auditions
To cast for Kohrra 2, much like her process for the 2023 season, Grover went back to Punjab, thinking familiarity would shorten the process. “I went in feeling really confident that I had already been there, so it would be easy this time,” she says.
It wasn’t.
The recce turned into another three to three-and-a-half months of constant travel all over Punjab. "There are places where people can’t even imagine auditions can happen. We went there!"
Casting for this season began in Mumbai as some of the new characters (Sam Bajwa played by Rannvijay Singha and Preet, played by Pooja Bhamrrah) carried a distinctly urban life, so they didn’t want to cast those in Punjab. Once those were locked, Grover moved base.
From there, the search widened again, and with it, the realisation of how limited the visible casting pool for Punjabi actors still is. “In regional films, you see the same four or five faces. Most others are living through theatre. When we reached smaller towns, people were shocked that auditions were happening!" Grover says.
By the end of the process, Grover had auditioned around 700 to 800 actors, out of which she cast roughly 150 to 160 characters. "Some didn’t make it to the final cut, but that is the scale of the world," she adds.
Not every part revealed itself easily. The character of Rakesh Kumar (played by Satyakam Anand) took really long to cast, so did that of Sam. While one of her personal victories was to cast Parminder Pal Kaur, a 73-year-old actor facing the camera for the first time as Harsimrat Atwal. “She has done theatre all her life in Punjab. So for her, this was her first screen work! It was also such a joy to cast Pradhuman Singh Mall, who plays Mona Singh's husband."
When asked about the unassuming Jaideep Ahlawat cameo on the show, Grover laughs and says the appearance happened outside the design of the show. He had come to visit the set and asked if he could do the part. “I actually got angry because I had cast someone,” she says, laughing. “He said, can I just do this? And everyone was like, 'OMG! You will do this?!'"
Cinematography | Letting The Place Dictate The Frames
Isshaan Ghosh did not begin with visual references for Kohrra 2. The DOP says he dislikes following references, as one loses the essence of the place when approached with already decided images. Ghosh, instead, likes to take inspiration from the locations, actors and the story. For this season, the mood came from the material and from winter in Punjab.
“The story is pretty grim and Punjab does have that side. So we kept high-contrast lighting. The images are softer because of the fog, but the shadows are deeper. When the sun is there, it is harsher. It was about replicating winter as truthfully as possible.” For Ghosh, the visual language had to reflect the inner weather of the characters. “There is a fogginess in their lives and that had to come across.”
His approach to cinematography on a show like Kohrra was deliberately functional, where it was not about constantly trying to make everything look "the best." The most visually appealing frame might not have the greatest impact. What matters is the punch the audience feels," he says. The stillness of the show comes from extensive preparation rather than from minimal effort.
“We had a very detailed shot breakdown. We went through each scene bit by bit and designed it properly. We had a three to four-month prep. So when we hit day one, we knew exactly what we were going to do.”
The look of the show was developed in close conversation with production design and costume. “Mukund helped me immensely in deciphering the palette and keeping it true to Punjab,” he says. “Without that, it wouldn’t have looked like this.”
Production Design | Spaces That Carry Memory
Mukund Gupta’s brief was clear from the beginning: The show wasn't going to be a postcard of Punjab. “We weren’t interested in mustard fields or celebratory excess. The environment had to carry the same weight as the characters," he shares.
"For me, the word that anchored everything was 'interiority.' The landscapes are expansive, but the emotional world is suffocating. So we built a Punjab that feels weathered—damp walls, aging concrete, half-finished houses funded by remittances, rooms that hold memory and silence. The horror in Kohrra is embedded in everyday spaces—police stations, homes, farms. That urgency comes from making the world feel uncomfortably real," he says.
The production design team consciously desaturated the visual palette. So, even when colour appears, it’s muted by dust, fog, or decay. The idea was that nothing feels decorative and everything feels inhabited. The world had to feel like it existed long before the camera arrived and would continue long after, Gupta informs.
The research began with immersion in small towns and peri-urban areas of Punjab—observing architecture, textures, paint, signage, wiring, furniture and even how people modify their homes over time.
"A lot of attention went into transitional spaces — verandas, terraces, unfinished staircases — because they tell stories about aspiration and migration. We also researched police infrastructure — not just official layouts but how these spaces evolve through use. Files pile up, repairs are makeshift, furniture is mismatched. That sense of organic disorder was important."
Restraint then became the central challenge, Gupta notes, and the effort was to ensure that the sets couldn’t become theatrical backdrops. "There’s also the emotional challenge of working on material that’s this heavy; they had to support performances without overwhelming them. The production design had to breathe quietly beneath the narrative. In many ways, Kohrra is about what lies beneath surfaces—socially and psychologically— so the design philosophy followed the same idea."