‘He Totally Gave Himself to the Project’: Shashanka Ghosh on Kartik Aaryan and Freddy

A bespectacled man, with a hint of a paunch, shuffles his way from work to home. He goes on dates that go badly because his nervousness gets the better of him. His shoulders droop, he stammers, he lurks in the shadows. This is Freddy Ginwalla, the unheroic hero of Freddy, as played by Kartik Aaryan. On paper, the role is nothing like the confident, wise-cracking men that have made Aaryan famous. “The newer generation of actors have a complete sense of cinema, and are comfortable taking risks instead of being too cautious of their on-screen image,” said director Shashanka Ghosh. He wasn’t entirely convinced that Aaryan would be able to play Freddy, an awkward young man whose life changes when he (literally) bumps into a beautiful young woman at a wedding. Since Ghosh’s previous works include the charming Khoobsurat (2014), with Sonam Kapoor and Fawad Khan, and the female buddy comedy Veere Di Wedding (2018), you may have expected Ghosh to stick to the rom-com genre. However, Freddy takes many unexpected (and gory) turns. The film is more of a crime thriller, tapping into familiar anxieties about predatory women and lonely men.

Initially, Ghosh wasn’t sure that Aaryan would be right for the project. “When Jay Shewakramani (the producer) ran the script by me, I asked who is doing it and was taken aback when Shewakramani mentioned Kartik’s name.” Aaryan did his bit to convince the director. “I told Kartik how I wanted to do this film, and Kartik said, ‘Sir, we will do it exactly like it then’,” Ghosh recalled.“Kartik has a certain star power, but to my utter surprise, he totally gave himself to the project. He wore the simplest of non-hero clothes and put on weight for the part — that kind of commitment blew me away.”

Over the past two decades, Ghosh’s filmography has covered a range of comic genres. He made his debut with Waisa Bhi Hota Hai II (2003), a Tarantino-esque comedy thriller that was ahead of the curve and released long before Hindi cinema’s gravitation towards the genre in the late 2000s. “A lot of my journey towards cinema was triggered by the millennium. I quit my job on Dec 31, 1999, deciding to give long-form storytelling a try after working in advertising and Channel V for several years. A little later, my friend Samrat introduced me to someone who had a rough draft for a movie.” Ghosh remembers being offered Rs. 1 crore to make the film. It ultimately took only a little more than that initial sum to finish the film. His sophomore film Quick Gun Murugun: Misadventures of an Indian Cowboy (2009) is, in his own words, “a freak case”. Teetering between silly and ironic, the film relishes in kitsch and quirk. The film’s hero is a Tamil cowboy who is pitted against a villainous restaurant owner named Rice Plate Reddy. “It took a really brave and demented producer to take chance on something like it,” said Ghosh. “Sadly, I see a blank reaction on many faces if I mention the film now. It deserves a second chance, especially in these times when the audience is exploring stuff of all kinds.”

Ghosh’s last few films — Plan A Plan B, House Arrest, Hey Prabhu, and now Freddy — have all been for streaming platforms, which Ghosh credits for bringing changes to the kinds of stories we see on screen. “While a Kantara (2022) or an RRR (2022) still rules the roost at the box-office, the audience overall has grown more tolerant and welcoming towards realism in their cinema. Earlier, we were too confined to the usual hero-heroine stories,” he said. Speaking about the popularity of crime–centric content on streaming platforms, Ghosh said it was indicative of “our instinctive consumption these days, to veer towards the darker genres with explorations of dark dramas and criminality.” While Freddy is among the most-watched streaming content across platforms this week, the rom-com Plan A Plan B was also on Netflix’s own list of popular movies. Netflix had approached Ghosh to make the film after observing that few films were being made in this genre, which has been a traditional audience favourite. For his next film, Ghosh wants to try a genre hasn’t attempted before. “I really want to write and direct an adventure film now,” he said. “Until recently, I didn’t have the bandwidth but I am finally working on an adventure-based script now. I thought it will be a piece of cake, given my interest in the genre, but I end up hitting writer’s block now and then.”

As a director, Ghosh is actively involved in the scripting. “I usually prefer not having writers on set and getting everything ready beforehand,” he said. “The writers too prefer it that way, I have no doubt. I would send them scenes where I needed tweaking, and they would make those changes and send them back.” With Freddy — written by Parveez Sheikh, who has co-written films like Darlings (2022) and Queen (2014) — Ghosh didn’t see the need for too many revisions. His approach towards his own work is critical, he said, and he always keeps his audience in mind while directing. “I follow a thread, a one-line thought or sentiment that I need to be conveyed — and if that gets through to the audience, my job is done. For Waisa Bhi Hota Hai, it was ‘Shit happens’. For Veere Di Wedding, the idea was to convey that friends are the new family.” Freddy, according to Ghosh, is about “how love can transform and change your entire configuration.”

The critical response to Freddy has been mixed, with some finding the thriller a refreshing change for Aryan while others despairing over the film’s clichéd storytelling. Ghosh says he’s not one to turn a blind eye to the flaws in his films. “I have already seen it [his own work] close to 300 times. So after a point, I can barely see the rights, I only see the wrongs. And it happens every single time. At first, I hated my first film Waisa Bhi Hota Hai II, I couldn’t stand it. Years later, I was on a flight and I ended up watching the film, and I thought to myself, ‘Hey, It’s a decent film’.” The time that it takes for Ghosh to see his films with fresh eyes changes from project to project. “With Quick Gun Murugun, it took 10 years before I liked it. For Khoobsurat, it took almost four years. With Veere De Wedding, I am still processing what all could have been better, what more could I have done.” About Freddy, Ghosh said, “I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not, but Freddy is one film where I am really happy with the end result.”