Ramesh Indira on Ayyana Mane: We wanted to cast 2-3 known names to pull larger audiences, but then…

This week, Zee5’s first Kannada original web series, Ayyana Mane drops on the platform. The 6-part series has been written and directed by Ramesh Indira, who is better known as Soma from Sapta Sagaradaache Ello, among other acting gigs. The series will be available in its original Kannada version as well as a Hindi dubbed one, the latter being a more recent addition. Given that the makers are targeting a larger audience, outside of Karnataka, wouldn’t it have made sense to have a more popular cast on board?

Ramesh Indira on his casting choices of Ayyana Mane

Ayyana Mane has a talented bunch of actors on the cast, including Kushee Ravi, Manasi Sudhir, Anirudh Acharya, Akshay Nayak, Vijay Shobraj Pavoor, Hitha Chandrashekar, Archana Kottige, Kushi Chandrashekar, among others. Speaking about the casting process, Ramesh explains, “Initially, there was a plan to cast at least 2-3 known faces to pull a larger audience and boost the marketing value of the show. But what happened is that in the last couple of years, the platform had invested so much money into content from, say, Tamil and Telugu, that by the time they came to Kannada, the focus was on getting maximum returns from minimal investment,” says Ramesh, who'd earlier directed Premier Padmini. 

With the available resources in terms of the money and the timeline he had, it was a big challenge for Ramesh to put a cast together for Ayyana Mane. “Despite these limitations, I approached a lot of actors and gave them narrations – with some, there were scheduling issues, and with others it was about money. I had to overcome all of these challenges and put the show together. I did not want to give the platform a chance to say that I am incapable of pulling it off, just because I can’t cast certain actors,” he says.

The show was greenlit in December last year, and the final product is ready for streaming on April 25, which meant that Ramesh had only a couple of months to take it from writing to execution. “There was a lot of pressure from the platform to deliver the episodes at the earliest, because it had to be pitched at the start of the financial year and so and so forth. If I had tried for more popular actors and waited for their availability, it would have been impossible to get the show on the road anytime soon,” he reckons.

Eventually, it was a collective call by the platform and the production house to go ahead with the chosen cast. “If the content is really good, we figured that no one will care about the ‘faces’. We just needed to ensure that the execution turns out well and then, tomorrow, this cast may just become popular on a much wider scale,” he signs off.