EXCLUSIVE | Amit Sial on 'The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case': 'It's an important series for the Gen-Z because...'

It’s hard to make political thrillers without taking sides. But what if a filmmaker decides to essay the aftermath of a tragedy that shook the nation? Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor and Applause Entertainment’s The Hunt is one such show that chronicles what happened after how it happened.

Amit Sial, who plays D.R. Kaarthikeyan (IGP CRPF), offers a remarkable and restrained performance. He’s fresh off the success of Raid 2. In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, the actor spoke about his prep for the show, his character.

Edited excerpts from the interview

How did you prepare for this role?

Luckily, there was enough material online, to sort of go through, to get the demeanour, his personality, the way he thinks, the way he talks. All of those things are right. And there’s this one specific interview where he’s talking about his line of work and the services that he’s provided, as an IPS officer and the services he provided while investigating for this particular case. He was a chameleon, so he mostly would converse in English or Tamil. But because you’re making a Hindi show, so then to just make it look a little authentic, I had to sort of attach a slight twang to my Hindi because I have a very specific North Indian Hindi, dialect diction.

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And, so all of these things are just a regular preparation that goes into playing a character, plus the added responsibility of being being very particular about playing a character game because he’s a real life person, and it’s a real life incident. And then, obviously, I had an amazing help from my director, Nagesh Kukunoor. And the script also was so tight and detail oriented that a lot of help, came from the script itself.

What fascinated you about this particular story, and how much were you aware about this entire incident that happened in 1991?

The incident itself, just to be a part of this whole story and the lead investigator and, trying to track the case was in itself, a big eye opener and just a privilege to be a part of, something like this. And, yes, I was very much aware of the incident because I was 16 when it actually happened. And when you’re 16, you’re mature enough to understand these things. Not not so much in detail, though, as, probably I know now. But, over a period of time, I kept reading about, the involvement of entity and trying to understand both sides and all of that. It’s a very important series for especially Gen-Z because a lot of them would probably not know about this incident, and, I hope it’s an eye opener for them also.

What did you take back from participating in a story that is inspired by true events?

I don’t know what I would take back. I’m just just to be a part of something like this, it sort of fills you up. It sort of it takes you into places within your own self where you probably have never never ventured before. And I think about the unpredictability of life and the kind of consequences politics might have, on one’s life.