Dabba Cartel: Shibani Dandekar reveals Instagram algorithm helped her decipher each character

Dabba Cartel, now out on Instagram, has caught people's eye for its powerful characters. The women-led series features the likes of Shabana Azmi and Jyotika. In a recent interview, Shibani revealed that Instagram and Google algorithm helped her crack what each character should be like. Here's what she said...

Shibani Dandekar jokes she didn't spend time with smugglers for Dabba Cartel reference

When asked Shibani if she spent time with a real-life person to understand the characters, she joked, "We did not hang out with any drug dealers for research, unfortunately."

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Instagram and Google algorithm helped Dabba Cartel writers crack the characters

"You really have to sit and go through emotions of that character, and it takes time," she mentioned to Fever FM, further sharing that search engines like Instagram and Google and their algorithms in particular also helped the crew crack what the character would be like.

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Shibani Dandekar explains the thought process behind cracking each character

"There's a lot of thought put into each character for sure. This is the first writer's group that I've been a part of but with every single character, we decided what their favourite colour would be, what kind of music would they listen to, what would be the clothing that they would wear, where does their journey start, what are the kind of difficulties that they're going through, how do they arrive, what is their trajectory - that's really important," the Dabba Cartel writer further shared, confessing that Jyotika's character has a much more difficult journey than the others.

Shibani explained that to do justice to the characters, it is important to understand the women who live in the housing society and how each one is different even in terms of class, status and financial bracket, making each journey different. "Their reason to do what they had to do is something we really had to dive deep into," she said, adding that they did not know if a character like those explored actually exist and thus, their research was limited. The crew had to figure things out as the shoot progressed. Shibani further shared that it took hours to perfect each character, but after a point, they could understand each character and predict their moves.