EXCLUSIVE | Manoj Bajpayee's 'The Family Man' directors Raj and DK on comparisons with Netflix's 'Sacred Games': 'We were not even looking at it because...'

Who said we need stars for an entertaining and engaging watch whether it is a movie or a series, audiences need honest performers. And that’s exactly what   The Family Man Season 3  is all about. Solid story-line, brilliant direction and stellar craftsmen and that’s all you need for a successful show. From the ‘most loved’ to the ‘most wanted’, Shrikant Tiwari’s (Manoj Bajpayee) journey is still full of struggles.

And in an exclusive interview with Firstpost, the directors of the show Raj and DK spilled the beans on how it all began before the pandemic, the comparisons with Netflix’s Sacred Games , and the evolution that has happened in season three.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

How much have the characters evolved from season one to season three?

DK: We’ve taken the story to a new region, a new plot, a fresh environment that we created. And for people who have watched the show, or once they watch the show, they’ll realize that even the family dynamics have completely changed now. That’s the new scenario. Even though the characters are the same that they are playing, we put them in a situation that they’ve not been in before. So it allows them to explore new dimensions in their characters, in their relationship and I mean the rest I’ll leave it for you guys to watch the show and figure out.

The Family Man was one of the first few showsbefore the OTT boom really happened. It was that one thing that people could relate to. Was this also a challenge for all of you?

DK: We had the seed of an idea. Raj, me and Suman, we created this right and we had the seed of an idea and always knew that this would be great for a long format thing rather than a movie because these are characters that can keep growing and it’s not so much a plot as it is canvas and characters which is what is required for a series, right? It would have been unfair if we had just made The Family Man one as a two-hour film.

We kind of had the seed of the idea and when these platforms came at the first was Amazon Prime that came into India and they were looking for shows. Nothing was made yet. So that’s when we decided to do this on Amazon and we were one of the first shows to be made.

Sacred Games was already there. So was it a tough competition during that time?

DK: We were not even looking at it because when we were planning on making this and working on it, Sacred Games hadn’t even come and eventually ,it took us like a couple of years to make it right we had a prior commitment finishing a film then getting on to this and somewhere along the line, Sacred Games came and even one or two other shows came on Amazon Prime but we were already well along and we knew what we were doing is anyway completely different.

It’s based out of the Northeast which has been a very common ground nowadays. What was the thought that went behind it?

DK: When we decided that season 3 was going to be set in this part of the country, we didn’t know that there were going to be other shows there because we drop a hint towards it in season 2 which was in 2021 and we already knew we were going here and we’re building the story as it turns out. I mean we find that Paatal Lok comes and our own actor is in it and it’s set in Nagaland and we’re like oh okay and now I believe even Delhi Crime has come, which is set in the north so these are all things that we’re also learning but we were not aware of it we we as a design for this series we chose say the north for season 1 that was the plan and we went south for season 2 and we already knew we were going to go to a new region which is a northeast for season season 3 and anyway a lot of The Family Man as you can see is more about the geopolitics than internal politics of the region.