Summary
Citadelis a wildly stylish, wickedly cool connected universe.
Nidimoru, D.K., and Prabhu sat down with Colliders ownChris McPhersonto talk aboutCitadel: Honey Bunny.
you’re free to watch the full conversation in the video above or read the transcript below.
Image via Prime Video
I love how vibrant, colorful and alive everything felt.
Were there any distinctive Indian filmmaking styles that you wanted to bring to a wider audience?
We wanted to stick to it.
Image via Prime Video
The spin-off series premieres on Prime Video on November 7.
Citadel, the franchise itself, is about spies and the globe-trotting nature of what that involves.
Did you enjoy having that freedom of being able to have the show in a more fixed location?
Image via Prime Video
You’re showcasing parts of India.
There are different parts of the world that you see, but we’re mainly based in India.
Did you feel empowered by that idea?
Image via Prime Video
You’ve got this budget here.
But with the series, we decided to open up to other languages.
They would speak their languages, and we got subtitles for it.
The Indian spin-off of the international spy franchise,Citadel.
So we started opening up to various regions and cultures across the country.
It’s a great opportunity.
Instead of globe-trotting, we thought we could place it in different parts of India.
What was the most challenging aspect to you?
We see Honey over two different periods of time.
What were the challenges for you as an actor to showcase the dual personalities?
The one that doesn’t know what’s going on into the fighter that we get to see.
SAMANTHA RUTH PRABHU: I think Honey is very relatable.
She reflectsmostwomen, actually.
She’s young, she’s naive, she’s exuberant.
So she ends up becoming a spy and circumstances in her life lead her to become a single mother.
She’s protecting her little cub at any cost.
So this is a different woman completely from the little girl she started out as.
It was easy to draw frommy own life.
That’s what is so interesting about Honey is thatshe’s a survivor.
She’s a fighter.
There’s a story of hope.There’s a story of a mother and a character that displays great strength.
It was extremely exciting and thrilling to try and get this right.
It was a wide canvas to play around with.
As you refer to there, she’s a mother, and the young girl who plays Nadia isunbelievable.
Where did you find her?
- What’s her story?
She’s a discovery, and we lucked out, right?
The casting director brought her to the table, and she showed us the auditions.
We fell in love with her.
We cast her based on that.
We met her, and she’s a very pretty, smart kid.
She’s actually too smart for her age, if I may say so.
Only later we discovered that she’s never acted before.
[Laughs] Yeah, she’s never acted before.
She’s never learned acting.
It’s just instinctively, naturally, she’s doing everything that a trained actor would do.
So I have this newfound respect for kids now.
It’s like you don’t know what they’re capable of.
How Do All Three Citadel Shows Interact?
All of these have strong female lead characters and that’s a happy commonality to have.
We have the three shows now, three very strong female characters at the heart of it.
Have you had discussions with the creators of the other shows as well?
What traits do you think that they all share?
DK: All of us have been in the loop of the other shows.
We read the American shows screenplays when we were developing.
The problem of feeling like we’re repeating things, I don’t think that even exists.
But yes, all of these have strong female lead characters and that’s a happy commonality to have.
We have fancy technology, these kinds of things.
One of the things I like the most about the show is we’re in the past.
How much fun did you have filming in the ’90s?
Are there are things that you weren’t able to bring into it that you wanted to?
What kind of throwback things were you really excited to put on screen?
DK: I mean, you just said it right?
What kind of fun you have.
You kind of said the answer to the question.
We really, really wanted to have fun.
NIDIMORU: We had an eight gigabyte data that needs to be decrypted.
Those kinds of things were a lot of fun.
Especially as techies, as ex-techies.
We were doing a lot of these throwbacks to the ’90s.
Citadel: Honey Bunnyis now streaming on Prime Video.
