MUMBAI:The trailer of the web series Taj: Divided By Blood starring Naseeruddin Shah, Aditi Rao Hydari, Aashim Gulati, Taaha Shah, and Shubham Kumar Mehra was released recently. The series revolves around the Mughal Empire, and the fight for the throne between the three sons of Emperor Akbar.
Shubham Kumar Mehra will be seen playing the role of Emperor Akbar’s youngest son Danyal, and the trailer gives a hint that his character might be shown as homosexual.
TellyChakkar recently interacted with Shubham and spoke to him about the reference point he had for his character, controversies, and more...
What was the reference point for you, for your character?
The script is everything, the way writers have written the script with all heart that we come to know about our characters in others’ dialogue as well. It’s like a canvas with so many things that you just have to do it together, but there’s creative liberty. So, the script was only the reference point and a bit of study that I had done. The most important thing was to understand the character’s childhood and relationships. He believes a lot in Allah. Why does he believe so much? How did he get that faith? So, all these things I had to understand.
A lot of times it happens that when a movie or a series revolving around history is made, it faces a lot of controversies. While signing Taj was there a hesitation that this might attract controversies as well?
Before Taj, I was almost like a homemaker with two dogs, no money, and fully funded by my mother. I had completely given up on acting, and I had not auditioned for a long time. When I started reading (the script), I had in mind that if I have to do something it has to be good. So, when I started reading this, on the second episode I was like I am not doing this, but by the fourth episode, I don’t know what happened, and I was like ‘I can’t leave this show’ because it is so well written. This again goes back to the writers more than any of us. They have spent so much time developing this and they have done it with such facts, and of course, they had to bridge that space, so there will be controversy and I get that. As far as homosexuality is concerned, I don’t think people were born differently at that age and stage. I believe that people were still people; it’s just that there was no awareness, exposure, and social media. And I don’t think that a kid who prays namaz cannot be gay, and I don’t think that there’s a contrast in it. A kid can believe in Allah and still be gay, and still, be born with certain emotions.
The trailer gives us a hint that there will be a few intimate scenes in the series. So, was it difficult as an actor to perform intimate scenes and did you have an intimacy coordinator on the sets?
I haven’t been to many sets, but I remember I had to shoot a scene on the second day and it had a certain shot that I was not comfortable with and I went up to our director Ronald Scalpello and asked him, ‘can we get rid of this?’. Not one question was asked, and he just took it off, and that scene hasn’t made it to the final cut. Normally, it’s treated like if two boys have to kiss what’s the issue, but Ronald made sure that everyone was out of the room, he went up to my co-actor and he came up to me, and he was asking constantly through the shoot and he made sure that we were very comfortable and it was done very tastefully.
Taj: Divided By Blood will premiere on Zee5 on 3rd March 2023.
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