Sandhya Mridul: Nikkhil shouts a lot and I love it

After her last big screen outing in Pan Nalin's highly-acclaimed 'Angry Indian Goddesses' (2015), Sandhya Mridul returns, this time to the small screen as Nazneen Khan, wife to prisoner of war and squadron leader Imaan Khan, in Nikkhil Advani's 'POW Bandhi Yudh Ke'. She is as much a prisoner as he, having waited 17 years, watching her life in limbo.

In her first collaboration with Advani, Sandhya admits he is one of the finest she has worked with. "I don't watch a lot of films, but I really loved 'D-Day' [Advani's film]. I am glad I gave him the green signal. He's passionate and emotional. I love the way he has surrendered himself to the show."

Nikkhil Advani

Are stories about his legendary short temper true? "Nikkhil shouts a lot and I love it. It is the kind of screaming that makes people work. There is no ego involved, he forgets about it in a few minutes. It is hard to preserve the quality of a show and Nikkhil realises that. He probably didn't know what he was getting into with a daily, but now that he has, he is pushing the envelope."

That the finite series has a film director helming it, gives it a different feel. But the story is one, Sandhya says, that may end up challenging the Indian daily soap formula. "In this industry, if something does well, we exhaust the trend by mimicking it. POW is going to break that mould. While a show like Naagin has an audience, there are those who don't wish to watch it. POW could cater to them."