Ishaan Khatter on bonding with 'Homebound' co-star Vishal Jethwa on coffee and 'torture': 'He came to my house and...'

Homebound is the trump card of the year. Directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and starring Ishaan Khatter, Janhvi Kapoor, and Vishal Jethwa, this is a heartfelt drama that beautifully and even brutally encapsulates burning issues like caste politics, prejudices, untouchability, and the 2019 pandemic. And in the times of horror, Ghaywan’s film is also able to find time for humour.

Standing tall are the three central characters that are constantly tested by the sheer unpredictability of life. They say if you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans. Chandan and Shoaib, the characters hauntingly essayed by Jethwa and Khatter, do exactly that, and then life happens.

On his bond with Vishal Jethwa

And while speaking about his bond with Vishal and how they became friends over coffee and torture, Ishaan Khatter revealed, “The film heavily relies on the friendship, feeling real, feeling lived in, feeling palpable, and feeling intimate. The first thing Neeraj told us was to be vulnerable with each other. Don’t just have a superficial relationship because making this film was something that’s so special and it’s such a great opportunity for us as actors.”

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The actor added, “Vishal came to my house, I made him coffee. We sat down and we just asked each other who we were. What are the things that made you the person that you are? And obviously we had our own share of events in our childhood that made us who we are that we shared with each other. And we started on that note. In one meeting, you don’t get to know a person fully, but we started on that note and it allowed us to be real with each other and open with each other.”

On their celluloid friendship

I think it’s an overwhelming emotion. Because at once Shoaib feels proud and he feels like this like a sense of triumphant, and at the same time that sense of loss and the irony of it coming after and the fact that he doesn’t share it with the family because the fact that he says  he is Chandan Kumar. It’s not about who I am. It’s like a shared journey and there’s so much. And at the end, it’s the one guy that he had who was his confidant. And they both faked their names at some point or the other just to pretend. So that is the intersectionality in the story and it’s so beautifully done.

On his character Shoaib

The actor revealed how he had to lose 8-10 kilos for the part to play a 22-year old boy who comes from the heartland of India. He even spoke about the vulnerability of Shoaib.

Ishaan revealed, “Shoaib is much more than vulnerable. But yes, as an audience, you definitely feel for these characters because there is a feeling of what they’re dealing with is so much bigger than them. Their adversary is not a single person. It’s a system, it’s a an environment, it’s something that is invisible. So it does feel very, very overpowering and it does meet the character very vulnerable.”

On working with director Neeraj Ghaywan

In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Firstpost, Ishaan Khatter revealed, “We had a very beautiful experience where one of the things we did to prepare for this film was  Neeraj, Vishal, Shridar Dubey and I. We all went to Barabanki and we spent many days in villages, interacting with people and sitting with them in their homes.”

He added, “This helped us get closer to understanding these characters better. Reading the script together there was bringing us closer to each other. For the last scene narration, we sat under a tree and during the very last bit of the narration there was a storm that hit the village. This kind of connected us to the scene. It was almost a spiritual experience that we had and I will never forget this.”

On the theme of Homebound

“It’s a very sincere film. It’s not a manipulative kind of film. And everybody who worked on this film understood what we were doing, they understood the assignment and I think everybody felt very strongly and deeply about the story. 
And so there were no gimmicks in the making of this film. And I think the background score is a very beautifully supporting the story and not trying to do something above and beyond that.”