'Farzi' creators Raj & DK: ‘A lot of research went into printing fake notes'

A list of Indian web series cannot be complete without the mention of lsquoThe Family Manrsquo and its sequel And the one name associated with the series is its creators Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK After the success of the Manoj Bajpayeestarrer spy thriller series the creators have another win on their hands Farzi The show which brings together actors like Shahid Kapoor Vijay Sethupathi Amol Palekar Raashii Khanna and Kay Kay Menon was released on February 10 on Amazon Prime VideoThe show revolves around Shahid Kapoor an artist whose expertise lies in flawlessly imitating existing art He takes his art to next level when he imitates the design of the Indian currency and falls in the midst of a counterfeiting racket Vijay Sethupathi on the other hand heads a task force that is set out to nab the counterfeiting kingpin Mansoor Dalal Kay Kay Menon At the trailer launch of the show last month Shahid Kapoor revealed that Raj and DK had come to him with the germ of the idea eight years ago with the intention of making a film on it Eventually they made it into an engaging series The last eight years also involved a lot of research about counterfeitingThere was a lot of research material that went into it We read about the world of counterfeiting itself and the various players in that world Also read about the more technical aspects of what this show deals with which is the process of making the currency note So there are a lot of these things that you cannot make up There is no fictitious way to do this A lot of research had to go into it with planning and effort When we were shooting it or printing the currency notes the fake currency notes we were actually printing it Its not some kind of VFX job or some kind of patch job We had to get around to the process of printing a convincing currency note in the press to be able to film it A lot of research and thought went into that part of it shared DK in a conversation with middaycomWe spent a lot of time discussing Shahid about his character with Raashii Kay Kay and with Vijay Sethupathi And each of them brought something to the table eventually Now at the end of the day as you can see they brought to the table something only they could have done They made themselves like indispensable the perfect cast for that character he addedAlso ReadI feel Farzi is the best digital debut says Shahid KapoorOne of Farzis many strengths is its cast All the actors play characters that they have never done before and that is something that Raj and DK consciously do From Sunny Shahid Megha Raashii and Firoz Bhuvan to Yasir every character has been thoughtfully penned and performed Even with lsquoThe Family Manrsquo Raj and DK presented different sides to wellknown faces like Neeraj Madhav and Samantha Ruth PrabhuIf you notice that everybody that we have cast so far in all our shows or in our films is cast differently from what weve seen them do or what theyve always done at least in our minds So thats been a conscious effort Like Neeraj Madhav does in romantic movies a chocolate boy in Malayalam films So you take him and make him appear in some character here Samantha was doing a certain kind of film down south and you take her and make Raji here so thats definitely a part of it Be it even to the level of Shahid Kapoor we want him to do this role because this is something hes never done before If it was a role that hes already done in two films and this is the third one first of all Shahid being the actor that he is he probably would have said Bro Ive done this before I dont want to do it And we being who we are we would say you know what youve done this before lets not do it So that part is very clear in our head that we want to explore a new facet while playing on their strengths rather than make them do what theyre comfortable doing or what theyve already doneAmol Palekar Kay Kay everybody has their own way of doing things Thats the job of the director to really figure out how each one does adapt to them and figure out a way to get everyone to interact with each other A good actor loves another good actor because they feed off each other no matter what So its always magic when you put two strong actors into a frame and let them do their things most of the time for when you have such a good cast you just sit back and watch and pick and choose what you like he addedAlso ReadSachinJigar tell a story with every song in Raj and DKs Farzi