When Meghna Gulzar went looking for her Raman in Daayra, she deliberately looked outside Hindi cinema. She wanted the film's world to feel geography-neutral, unmoored from any one state or language, and Prithviraj Sukumaran's name came to her on instinct. A 45-minute meeting later, Prithviraj was on board. "I never narrate," Gulzar said of her process; she read him the script instead, trusting the story to do the convincing.
For Prithviraj, walking onto a Daayra set alongside Kareena Kapoor Khan meant walking in as something of an outsider — an actor with no shared filmography, no prior history with either his co-star or his director, stepping into a story he didn't yet know was already cast. He recalls being genuinely caught off-guard learning Kareena Kapoor Khan was playing Ajooni, his opposite number in the crime thriller. That surprise, he says, is what made the casting feel so "refreshing".
“So when Meghna said, I'm hoping to get Kareena to play Ajouni, it was a big surprise for me, because as we are listening to a film like this, you don't expect a big star (like her) to come on board,” the actor said in a recent conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India.
When what it's like being on a Meghna Gulzar set, he describes himself as a chronic question-asker, someone who needs the "why" behind every instruction before he can commit to it.
On Daayra, that meant pushing back on specific things. When Gulzar asked him to sit down after a particular line, he asked her why. Prithviraj shared, "And then she has an answer for it. I'm like, damn, how do you have an answer for everything?"
That precision, by his account, runs through the entire production, down to details as granular as when an actor should or shouldn't blink in a scene.
“That same precision extended to Kareena's performance too down to when she could and couldn't blink", so that eye contact, and the tension it carries, never breaks before it's meant to. I
It's the kind of exactness that turns a set into something closer to a laboratory than a film shoot, and Prithviraj says it forced the entire cast into genuine introspection, sending them back to the text again and again rather than coasting on instinct.
One set memory Prithviraj returns to with particular warmth: the day Gulzar sahab, Meghna Gulzar’s father, visited. It was his first time meeting the veteran poet-lyricist in person, and he describes the moment less like a legend dropping by and more like a father quietly checking in on his daughter's film. Daayra carries a song written by Gulzar Sahab, and for Prithviraj, that alone made the project feel weightier. But what stayed with him wasn't the grandeur, but ease.
Prithviraj calls Gulzar Sahab "such an easy gentleman," someone whose grace is evident the moment you're in the room, and said it was simply wonderful to have him on set.
Produced by Junglee Pictures and Pen Studios, Daayra comes to theatres on September 18.