Early on in our chat with Hansal Mehta, it’s certain that the director is protective about the Scam franchise, but not possessive. After all, he handed over the directing reins of the show that made him a household name to another filmmaker as Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta story moved to Scam 2003: The Telgi Story. “The show needed a fresh pair of eyes. Scam remains my baby, but now it also has a new parent,” begins Mehta, who serves as the showrunner of SonyLIV’s latest offering, while Tushar Hiranandani is the director. Starring Gagan Dev Riar as Abdul Karim Telgi, who committed the 2003 scam paper fraud, the series dropped five episodes last week. 

Even as Mehta is focused on delivering rest of the season, he is happy that the audience looks impressed with the show so far. The director says he was certain that Hiranandani would bring a distinct commercial value to the franchise. “Because of his experience in commercial cinema, there’s an element of entertainment that he brings in, which I wanted in Scam 2003, because Telgi is a different beast from Harshad Mehta,” says Mehta, adding that following this experience, he is keen to build multiple collaborations with other directors on shows. “Long form storytelling needs wider collaborations. I enjoy mentoring the format, guiding the process. As a showrunner, you have a larger responsibility to a show. Like, Scam has given us so much love, it changed so many lives so, the bigger responsibility was to keep that spirit alive,” he says.