Aparna Purohit talks about what made her choose a political drama

Over the last four years, we at Amazon Prime Video have worked towards telling compelling stories that speak to audiences across the length and breadth of the country. I am proud to say that Tandav is the story that is truly rooted in our soil. This our first political drama. It is an interesting story about the pursuit of power and the lengths one will go to get it and in some cases keep it. It has the right doses of all the ingredients: Love, Hate, Deceive, Betrayal, Suspense, and Thrill. When Ali came to us with the story in 2017, we instantly knew that this is the story to be told. He was passionate about his idea. Moreover, it is amazing to see how Himanshu has managed to put together all the efforts in this composition along with managing to get a stellar cast on-board - Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Sunil Grover, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Dino Morea Kumud Mishra, Gauahar Khan, Amyra Dastur, Mohd. Zeeshan Ayyub, Kritika Kamra, Sarah Jane Dias, Sandhya Mridul, Annup Sonii, Hitten Ttejwani, Paresh Pahuja, and Shonali Nagrani all have outdone themselves to nail their performances in the show. It has been a wonderful journey and together we have seen Tandav take shape and become a series. We are incredibly proud to present this to our customers. We are looking forward to starting this New Year with a big bang.

We have always endeavored to tell stories that are culturally rooted, shows that can speak to many Indias that co-exists. Also we try to ensure that we have a good bank of all the genres that exists. For example – war drama – The Forgotten Army, musical – Bandish Bandits , comedy like Four More Shots Please!, crime drama and thrillers like Paatal Lok, The Family Man and Mirzapur. I think the only missing piece was a political drama and Tandav addresses that need gap. I distinctly remember when Ali ( Ali Abbas Zafar, Creator or Tandav) narrated the story to us in 2017. He is a very visual narrator. We felt that the story was a peek into the world that we read about in newspapers and seen on the television but hardly know about it in detail. It was a very easy decision to make to opt for this one. And then finally the wonderful cast came together for this show and breathed life into the characters and created all the magic. I am incredibly proud of this show and this journey that we have had.

Why Political drama and a show on such a large scale?
Political Drama is an untapped genre and for a nation that is so obsessed with its politics, it wasn’t a difficult choice to make. Moreover, when you have such a passionate creator like Ali on board who has such an amazing cinematic voice, a writer like Gourva Solanki who has crafted all the characters with the utmost sensitivity and wrote dialogues with such detailing along with versatile and assembled casts who brought life to the characters, it has been an exhilarating journey collaborating with everyone. As far as the scale is concerned, we had Himanshu. We like to enable our creators to help them translate their creative vision in an un-diluted way on the screen and we facilitate whatever it takes to do that.