Director Zoya Akhtar, who is all set to release her next film Archies on Netflix, addressed the reason for casting newbies in the film. In an exclusive chat with India Today. in, the Gully Boy director revealed the reason for not casting A-listers in her much-awaited film.
The Archies is an adaptation of the popular comic book series of the same name. The film features Agastya Nanda, Suhana Khan, Khushi Kapoor, Mihir Ahuja, Vedant Raina, Aditi ‘Dot’ Saigal, and Yuvraj Menda. Now speaking about casting these young actors, Zoya told IndiaToday. in, “We were always very clear that we would cast newcomers. See, Archies is a very iconic comic. The characters are iconic. So if we have to take a known actor, I feel somewhere that actor’s image or past image or baggage or whatever you know, would come in there. That was one reason we wanted them to be completely new. So they really had to embody these characters and the audience had to believe that they are these characters. The second thing was we wanted them to be 17 years old looking. So we needed very young actors and they had to be newcomers. It had to be them.”
Further divulging details about the casting, Zoya said that all the actors had to audition for every character: “They’re all newcomers, so you don’t know what to expect. So what our casting directors did is they put everyone on tape for everything because one thing is the physicality of it, but the other thing is that you want to get a sense of the person, what the makeup of that person is, their personality, their essence, and does that resonates with a particular character. So we had to put them on tape, to see what are they feeling like, besides the fact that they can act and all that. So it takes time. It was a long process.”
When asked who is her favorite character from the film, Zoya smiled and said, “I oscillate between Betty and Veronica.”
The Archies will be released on Netflix on December 7.
Source: India Today