There is some truth and some gossip: Vikramaditya Motwane on 'Jubilee'

New Delhi: Some stories are real and others just ‘urban legends’ in ‘Jubilee’, said director Vikramaditya Motwane about his 10-part series that serves as an interesting guide to the early days of Hindi cinema.

‘Jubilee’, set during the Partition and the decades after that, chronicles the lives of a studio boss, his movie-star wife, his trusted aide, a rising star, a nautch girl and a refugee.

According to Motwane, who co-created the ‘Prime Video’ show with Soumik Sen, it all started as a small idea about exploring the power dynamics and the drama of those early years of cinema.

“But it’s taken a good five to six years for that one idea to end up becoming a pitch and then a series. It’s been quite a journey. It’s the stories you hear. There is some truth, some gossip and everything put into this. Today, who’s to say what’s true, what’s made up and what’s an urban legend that’s taken on a life of its own to become stories that we hear almost 70-75 years after the era? It’s a wonderful way of presenting it to the audience,” he said.

The first part of the series, featuring a stellar cast of Prosenjit Chatterjee, Aditi Rao Hydari, Aparshakti Khurana, Wamiqa Gabbi, Sidhant Gupta, Nandish Sandhu and Ram Kapoor, will premiere on April 7, followed by the second part, also consisting of five episodes, releasing on April 14.

The challenges in recreating the era within a budget were aplenty but fun for the director, known for projects such as ‘Udaan’, ‘Lootera’, ‘Trapped’ and ‘Sacred Games’ series.