EXCLUSIVE | 'Suzhal: The Vortex' creators Pushkar and Gayatri: 'We really liked Paatal Lok 2, it beautifully captures...'

The highly anticipated return of Suzhal-The Vortex Season 2, has set the stage for an electrifying crime thriller, with its gripping trailer sending shockwaves of suspense that is leaving audiences on the edge of their seats. As Sakkarai delves deeper into the brutal murder of activist lawyer and social worker Chellappa, he finds himself spiraling down a maze of deceit, secrecy, crime, conspiracy, and death.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, Pushkar and Gayatri talk about the second season, the shows they have liked on the streaming platforms, and the importance of making the milieu one of the characters.

Edited excerpts from the interview

Visually and in terms of cinematography, it is a very rich show. How did you both prepare as creators?

Pushkar: As showrunners, we had two directors on board, Bramma and Sarjun, who are there doing the episodes. But as showrunners, our processes, once the script is done and, we do detailed discussions first with the directors. So episode by episode, scene by scene, beat by beat, we run it through with them. And in this process, we also start, looking at locations with our DOP.

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Gayatri: So between looking at locations and forming the visual idea, one thing is, we didn’t want, especially the festival visuals, to be exactly like season one. So, there’s a different setting when. Season one was set in the hills and, this one, we’ve set it against the sea. I mean, this festival also happens against the sea. So, like that one is a lot of warm and gold and lot of night time, festival visuals. This one is a lot of blue and bright skies and, you have to get the mystery along with this blue white skies, white skies. So those things actually, a lot of planning happens.

The best thing about the content that is coming on OTT and films these days is that the milieu is also a part of the story. It becomes a part of the story, the locations, and the the place where the series is short. So please talk to me about the locations of the show, both in season one and season two.

Pushkar: Geography plays a very important part in when you have a crime history. I think the best example is season two of Paatal Lok, which, they have set in the Northeast. And it beautifully captures that. So similar to that, in season one, we had the small hilltop. So this was a place which was stitched together among five, six different locations, all hill towns. You form a visual idea of how that place has to look and feel. And then you go hunting, find that exact location, if not the exact location, something close to it, and then you do work to stitch it together. Similarly, for season two, since the festival happens in a beachside town, we had to literally stitch together a whole bunch of different, coastal areas.

Gayatri: Actually, for season one also, we had to shoot that quarry bit we were shooting in Chennai. When we’re writing, we do this whole map of like what happens where and what kind of locations we need, the location scout is like a huge part of our pre production and after that, we kind of have an idea. So that geography we kind of share it to the directors also. A lot of process goes into that.

Gayatri, in these last five years since the OTT boom has happened, have you seen any change in the way we tell stories, we create content? Has everything changed or are things still the same?

I think each medium has its own strengths and the way its stories are told. Features are driven towards the protagonist and an antagonist. In the OTT space, which is like long form storytelling, the one big advantage we see is as writers and creators is like you can delve into a lot more characters. The milieu becomes what you were saying earlier. Now the milieu becomes a character by itself. So you have a lot more time and especially when you go from one season to another, the character arcs can actually extend a lot. So I think that is actually a big difference and also we need to maintain the interest of the audience with each episode.

It’s not a capital audience like a voice. So we need to keep the interest level peaking all the time. So, we try to kind of figure that out, with writing, like, you know, a lot of reversals and things which are suspense and surprise. So we find challenging to write, for this space.

Which are some of the recent movies and shows that you saw that you really like, you really enjoyed.?

Pushkar: Paatal Lok is something we really like that we have started seeing on Prime Video.

Gayatri: And another show we really like was Slow Horses on Apple TV. The Boys on Prime Video. We watch almost every movie which releases on weekend on Friday and then Saturday, Sundays.