Bollywood’s leading casting director now has his own talk show. After casting for films like Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), PK (2014) and Jawan (2023), as well as streaming shows like Delhi Crime (2019), The Family Man (2019) and the Scam series (2020), Mukesh Chhabra, who describes himself as “an excited child”, is now keen on sharing what he has learnt over the years with audiences. His talk show “The Bombay Dream”, which can be viewed on Mashable India’s YouTube channel, currently has five episodes that follow Chhabra’s conversations with film directors about their casting process. The guests so far have been Farah Khan, Imtiaz Ali, Hansal Mehta, Kabir Khan, and the duo of Raj & DK.

Film Companion spoke to the casting director-turned-star about being a talk show host. Edited excerpts from the interview:

What made you want to start “The Bombay Dream”?

Whenever I listened to actors’ interviews, I realised that there’s a missing link here — how were they cast? What was the process? I thought people should know this from the point of view of the director — on a show where there is no gossip, no affair-talk, no random Rapid Fire. It’s just purely on performance and casting. When I shared the idea of this talk show to my friend at Mashable, he loved it and immediately jumped on it. And all the directors I’ve worked with, who are very close to me, also loved the idea. You won’t believe, some of our discussions go on for three hours, but we have to edit it down. But they have so much to say about the actor, the performance, and the process of casting and the script. This is just a pure discussion on the craft of casting. The show is entirely shot in my own studio, next to my office in Andheri.

What do you want audiences to take away from the show?

The objective is just to spread positivity and motivation. If you give yourself over to the craft, you can make it. There’s no rocket science. There are a lot of misconceptions about casting, but it’s actually a simple process that you can hear straight from the director. That was the whole idea. [Audiences] will get the right advice from the guest and me as a casting director.

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