Jubilee’s Alok Arora on Vikramaditya Motwane: He is a man of few words, but his vision for every scene was extremely clear

Lately, everyone’s been praising director Vikramaditya Motwane’s nostalgia-loaded period drama Jubilee. Featuring an ensemble cast - including Prosenjit Chatterjee, Aditi Rao Hydari, Aparshakti Khurana, Sidhant Gupta, Wamiqa Gabbi and Ram Kapoor - the story of the 10-part web series, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is about the movie industry of the mid-1940s. Recalling his experience of being a part of the show, actor Alok Arora - who plays the character of a refugee named Raghu Jhalani - recently said that although Vikramaditya is a man of few words, he used to give a lot of freedom to all the actors on the set.  

A Film and Television Institute of India graduate, Alok has previously acted in movies like Raazi and Manto. Speaking about his experience of working with the creator of Jubilee, the actor told OTTplay, “I genuinely believe that a good performance depends on how much freedom you get as an actor, and also how much you are trusted as an artiste. While shooting for Jubilee, I was Initially a little confused because Vikram is a man of very few words. But again, he is extremely clear in his vision, regarding any scene as well as the project as a whole. What I loved about his style of direction is that he used to give complete freedom to actors to play out the scenes during rehearsals, according to their own vision and then he used to place his shots according to the actors’ movements. And if needed, he would make a few changes, which weren’t many. Here, I would also like to make a special mention of his entire crew, who together created such a conducive, professional and yet a friendly atmosphere on the set.”

Also read: Jubilee web series review: Sidhant Gupta hits it out of the park in Vikramaditya Motwane’s beautiful ode to the golden era of Hindi films

When asked if he had a favourite character in the series apart from his own, Alok responded, “God, this is such a difficult question, especially in regard to this project, because every character is so detailed and fleshed out that as an actor you would want to experience them all - be it Shrikant Roy’s [played by Prosenjit Chatterjee] power or Binod Das/Madan Kumar’s [Aparshakti Khurana] ruthless ambition or Jay Khanna’s [Sidhant Gupta] flamboyance and boyish charm. Even the female characters were also well crafted and enacted. Every role in Jubilee is so perfectly drawn out that it’s just too difficult for me to choose one. I mean, ideally, I would want to experience all the characters. It’s like asking a child, which is your favourite flavour of ice cream? Whereas, I want to taste all the flavours.” 

Sharing anecdotes from the set of Jubilee, the actor said, “During our shooting in Sitapur - a small town near Lucknow - the whole cast and crew was put up in a resort. It was just before Diwali and the T20 World Cup was going on. So, on days when we were not shooting, there used to be an open-screening of the World Cup matches. Sadly, India lost to Pakistan in the championship, but it used to be a fun atmosphere on the set, thanks to the matches. Sometimes, we even used to play football together as a whole team.”