EXCLUSIVE | 'Ishq Vishk Rebound' director Nipun Avinash Dharmadhikari: 'The idea we were trying to crack didn't work because...'

Rohit Saraf, Pashmina Roshan, Jibraan Khan, Naila Grrewal came together for Ishq Vishk Rebound that released in cinemas a week ago. The captain of the ship Nipun Avinash Dharmadhikari spoke exclusively to Firstpost about how it all began and casting fresh faces again for the ‘spirited sequel’ to a frothy film that launched the career of Shahid Kapoor.

Edited excerpts from the interview

Where did the journey of Ishq Vishk Rebound begin?

It began somewhere around 4 to 5 years back. Jayaji and Rameshji (Taurani) had gotten in touch with me, and pitched this idea that they want to take the legacy of Ishq Vishk forward. And my friend Akarsh Khurana was also going to be a part of the writing team at that time. For some reason, that idea that we were trying to crack didn’t work out. Jaya and I kept in touch, and we were speaking about it. And she had this idea that let’s, do something that will resonate with the youth of today, That is when she came up with the idea for rebound relationship because the nature of relationships has started changing.

And there are now also labels to these relationships. Like, it was not as if rebound relationship didn’t happen before. They they used to, but I think, they now everything now has a label. You know, you are in a situation ship or you’re I I don’t know. There are so many labels around it now. And, once you label a relationship, you start looking at it in that perspective. And, Vaishali, Vinay, and Ketan, they came on board. They cracked a story. The basic idea behind that was that we’ll go ahead with, newer people, the younger lot like we had, like they had with her in the first film, which launched the careers of so many people.

What went behind the casting of the film?

I had worked with Rohit, in the post season of Mismatched, and I knew his capability. And while he’s not exactly, a fresh face, but he’s still liking a fresh face for a theatrical release. He’s mostly on web, and he’s a good presence on social media as well. This is something, that we’ve been, working on for the past few years. All of us are really passionate about it. We have put in, like, honest efforts in this, and I hope it it really resonates with, people of all age groups.

I felt that the protagonist should be played by Rohit. So I think he was the only one who didn’t audition, because we approached him with that, with that script. And, even he liked it. But the others, the 4 characters that we had in mind, once we had on board, we decided that we should go ahead with, these fresh and newer faces.

And, then they all went through audition processes. It was because of the audition processes that I got to understand that. I saw Jibraan Khan, and I said that, why do I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere, but I am not able to place you? And then after some time, after the audition, he told me he was Shah Rukh’s son in K3G. When, Pashmina came along, it was just Pashmina at that time.

So, many many girls had auditioned for that role. And, after, Pashmina auditioned, and then, we were generally chatting, like, what’s happening? What are you doing? What is your background like? And that is when I realized that, you know, she actually comes from this, illustrious family. But still, it was a very good audition that she gave. She came close to the character of Sanya, which is a difficult character. And Naila was, I think, spot on, in her audition. She was, I guess, the only one who cracked that up.

We always ask these questions to the actors about their prep, and they say we had to take a lot of workshops and do this and do that. But how was your prep like while you were making this film?

I had just a release of my film, a Marathi film that I had done, which was based on classical music. And this was a completely different, it was a shift in the genre completely. I have also been a part of the 1st season of Mismatched. So I do enjoy speaking their language, trying to understand what they are going through. Because in a way, when it comes to age, I’m at a crossroads. I’m neither here nor there at the moment. So I try to be with the younger lot as much as possible. So I think my prep mostly was hanging out with these 4 actors, speaking with them about the script, asking them, all this feedback, incorporating that feedback in the script. And, I think most of the prep work went in the script only. I think once you have that solid foundation, then it is very difficult to go wrong.