The trailer of director Soumik Chatterjee’s recently launched suspense thriller Honeymoon, released on Klikk, looked pretty intense. Shot in the picturesque locales of Vizag, Arakku and Vimli, the web show has three main pillars — Sean Banerjee, who debuted on the web with this, Aishwarya Sen and Subrat Dutta. Indulge talks to Sean, Aishwarya and Subrat who shed more light on the web show.
Tell us a little about Honeymoon.
Subrat: Honeymoon usually has a very romantic connotation, but in this, will the couple be able to celebrate their honeymoon? All three pivotal characters — played by Sean, Aishwarya and I — have a past, and you get to see how their pasts are unveiled in every episode. To know what happens at the end, you definitely have to watch the series. While Sean and Aishwarya play the newly-married couple — Ishan and Ranjini — I play Sekhar, an intruder, who disrupts their relationship.
Sean and Aishwarya, share some anecdotes on the characters you are playing.
Sean: Ishan doesn’t have much of a backstory as compared to Ranjini or Sekhar, but Ishan has many layers. While he is first portrayed as a happy-go-lucky husband, very sorted in his life, and is a careerist who is doing well professionally, he has a past which he hasn’t shared with Ranjini, and that gets revealed through a lot of incidents. Working in television is very different from that of a web series, so that was a bit of a challenge for me. And most importantly, no traits of Ishan matched mine, so I had to prepare immensely. I consulted our director Soumik Chatterjee now and then to help me research and prepare for my character.
Aishwarya: Ranjini is a pretty difficult character to play and I couldn’t relate to her most of the time. Our director helped me through and through and explained the character traits of Ranjini. She too has a past, which is psychological, making it even more difficult to portray.
Subrat: I felt it was pretty difficult for someone Aishwarya’s age to play such a difficult character. If not tackled well, it could have been melodramatic.
How different is it to shoot for daily soaps, web shows and films?
Subrat: In television serials, there usually isn’t any continuity in the episodes, and a web series is like two full movies. So the expectation is to maintain emotional continuity throughout. Suppose the actor is shooting the episodes towards the end, he will also have to remember the expression he gave in the previous episodes, or what he was wearing and every other detail.
Aishwarya: Television has helped me develop some good habits. I could never memorise the chapters in my textbooks, but television teaches me how to remember the script instantly. While for web shows or films, you get your script way ahead of the shoot, in TV serials, you are given scripts daily. Now, after going through the script thoroughly, I’ve got a grasp of the dialogues.
Sean: I agree with Aishwarya. But I also feel that in the case of serials, when the plot or situation is monotonous, it becomes difficult to come up with something new.
With the advent of OTT, has the ultimate goal of acting in films been diluted?
Sean: Watching films on the big screen still has a different appeal.
Aishwarya: Definitely, the big screen has a different appeal, but I want to play varied characters, and do more content-driven work, irrespective of the medium.
Subrat: I have probably worked in over 50 films. But after a certain period, I realised, no matter how great is the character I play in star-studded films my character or I won’t be remembered. So, now I would choose only those films or web shows in which I play the lead or the titular character. But I would like to explore television serials.
Upcoming projects?
Aishwarya: There are a few projects in the pipeline. But nothing has been finalised yet.
Sean: This is my first web show and I would love to explore the medium more.
Subrat: I recently shot a Hindi film in Odisha. Right now, I am shooting for a Bengali film, and a part of an anthology simultaneously. I also have a Klikk project and a few upcoming releases like an untitled film based on Samaresh Basu’s novel Projapoti, Guthlee, and a few more.