EXCLUSIVE | Netflix's 'IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack' actor Dia Mirza reveals how this journalist-filmmaker was trapped during the hijack in 1999: 'She was actually stuck at work for 72 hours when...'

As a routine flight ascended into the winter sky, a chilling announcement signaled the beginning of a hijack that would change Indian aviation history forever. Inside, passengers faced mounting terror as the aircraft made emergency landings in four countries overnight. Meanwhile, negotiators outside raced against the clock to ensure the safety of 189 onboard.

This is the basic plot of Netflix and Anubhav Sinha’s new show IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. It has a remarkable ensemble comprising Vijay Varma, Arvind Swami, Dia Mirza, Patralekhaa, Amrita Puri, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa, Anupam Tripathi, Kanwaljeet Singh, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Sushant Singh, Aditya Srivastava, Rajeev Thakur and Yashpal Sharma.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, Anubhav Sinha, along with Vijay Varma, Dia Mirza, and Patralekhaa opened up about their experience of working in the show and lots more.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

Anubhav, I want to start by asking you that the screenplay of the show is very gripping. The moment the hijack happens, we are introduced to one character after another. So what does it take to write an engaging screenplay of an engaging story?

I’ll have to do a screenplay class, and I need to attend one myself.

Dia jumps in between and smilingly says, “But, No. Currently, people are just watching your films to to get classes.”

Anubhav continues, “I don’t know how else to explain. The business of making film, the art of making films is in thin air. And, it’s for the more learned ones to articulate it and how it happened. I don’t know if it is something that it happens from the gut and you find it interesting and exciting and you go for it. And, a lot of times it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But it is the for the more educated ones in the business of criticizing or analysing, that it can be articulated. I don’t think personally I can articulate my own work.”

Vijay, you have had some really challenging roles as an actor of late, be it Gully Boy, be it Dahaad, be it Darlings, be it Jaane Jaan. So how challenging was IC 814?

I don’t look at my work this way. I don’t know why the press only wants to know how difficult it was. Sometimes it’s not very difficult. And sometimes it might be. Sometimes it is not difficult because you’re doing exactly what you want to do in life. You’re very happy. And, you want to do your best. And you might see some challenges on your part, but it’s not a challenging journey. It’s actually going in the direction where you exactly want to head.

I think I had to walk a little bit to understand, the workings of a pilot, to understand the mechanical, the technical nature of the job. And that was the training part, and getting to know the captain, the real life captain, and hearing the story from him helped me. But once I sat down and started shooting, I suppose there were some other obstacles and challenges wherein I was restricted, and I had to use a lot of my imagination and respond to people without looking at them. So that was a learning curve. But often we have spoken to several people in our family without looking at them.

So, that’s also something that we are trained, as individuals. It was actually a very wholesome, a very important milestone for me. And and to play a real life hero and an unsung hero, is any actor’s, wish list.

Dia, you play a journalist who has migrated from print to television, and I like your banter with your colleague, Nandini, played by Amrita. So I want to ask you, in these 23 years since you have been working as an actor, how much have you seen journalism evolve?

Oh, wow. It’s so interesting that you asked me this question, and you’re possibly the first journalist who’s asked me this question. Thank you for it. I think a very big part of being able to play this part has been the privilege of watching women in media at work. And, just being privy to their very personal journeys and their stories. You know, in 1999, I was 18. I was just starting out, and I was at the Miss India contest training for the Miss India for 2000. And when this situation happened, it was something that so many of my contemporaries and peers who I continue to engage with till this day. Some of them had just started out. Some of them were 4 years, 5 years into journalism.

And I’ve watched their arc over the years. And, it’s been so interesting to see how hard they fought to retain their integrity, and I think that’s the reality that most journalists with strong integrity journalistic integrities have been fighting for or struggling with. So many of them have taken sabbaticals, have quit their jobs in news channels and are now kind of freelancing or has started their own YouTube channels and are doing independent journalism. Very many of them have gone on to become documentary filmmakers, Oscar award winning documentary film filmmakers. You know, one of the people I can think of is Swati Thiyagarajan, who was with NDTV at the time, and I loved her. My god. I mean, she’s just one of the most remarkable journalists I’ve had the privilege of engaging with, and she’s also a conservation journalist.

So she was actually one of the pioneers of bringing the focus of environmentalism and wildlife conservation into the country. She was actually stuck at at work for 72 hours when this situation was unfolding, and she was covering the beat for it. You know? She was the news anchor. And, and many of them started off as print journalists and graduated to print, to to to TV.

And, what’s very interesting about my character is that she’s still the editor of the newspaper. And she’s running this new news network. So you get a sense of that shift that is occurring and how it was challenging or beginning to challenge the ethics of journalism and conversation that’s even more relevant today than perhaps that time.

Patralekhaa, what was the prep for you like for the role of an air hostess?

Anubhav sir doesn’t like to prep much with his actors because he’s so clear about what he wants. And I feel like that also makes an actor comfortable because the captain of the ship has so much clarity. So I kept asking, do I need to do something? I had to go and learn couple of things, what happens inside the aircraft and those things, but nothing in particular to the character that I was playing. He had this magic wand. And he went, ‘We have to do this.’ And he also, sets up the scene in such a way that you’re there.

Having said that, just being in an also, the space also makes a lot of difference. We were inside the aircraft. It was, I’ll use the word again, claustrophobic, and there’s so many of us. So it just put us in that case, and I felt like it made, things a bit easier.

Anubhav, what I like about you as a filmmaker is that you like to shoot with grandeur, right from your first film Tum Bin to Dus to even this show. There’s a shot here, where where Amrita is climbing the stairs to meet Dia’s character, and you have taken a top shot. So there is something very grand about that shot as well. Do you like to add grandeur to your stories? 

I used to look at filmmaking like that, until the my my this new innings, but not anymore. Now every shot has a reason. That particular shot that you speak about is about showing the transition. So that that staircase is old colonial building. And then you go into a new office, which is very today and contemporary. So that shot is for my transition from news moving from an archaic old school, news telling to a new school news telling. That chart is a transition to that. It’s not for grandeur, but those colonial structures were grand.

Vijay, what I like about you as an actor is that there is a certain sense of restraint in your performances. And even in IC 814, when the terrorists have pointed the gun at you, never once we see you panic, even though there is a sense of tension. So does this restraint come from your filmmakers, or there are some personal inputs as well?

I think it comes from the Real Life Captain. I found a certain kind of me in him. There’s a sense of simplicity and he reminded me of Dhoni, in crisis also. There’s a certain kind of calm that he practices. So it was very reminiscent of Dhoni. Every time I met him, like, very quiet and silently doing what he’s supposed to do. So those were the personality traits that we hit hard on. And with those personality traits, there was no room for real panic. Because a lot of turmoil was going inside of him, but he managed to kind of not really come to the surface.

Dia, we spoke about the evolution of journalism. I want to ask you right from Dus in 2005 till IC 814, how much do you feel Anubhav Sinha has evolved as a filmmaker?

We’ve had several of these conversations, since Mulk, Now, people have called him Anubhav Sinha 2.0, this phase of his career and and craft as Anubhav Sinha 2.0. But let me tell you that Anubhav has always been an extremely intelligent, astute thinking filmmaker. I think whatever he’s done, he’s done from a place of, I think in the earlier part of life, the reason to tell stories was different. And today, his reason to tell stories is very different. But if you think about his craft, he’s always been on top of the game. The level of technical expertise and his understanding of language in cinema is beyond. And I think because he’s a voracious reader, he watches so much cinema. He’s always learning. He’s always imbibing. He’s always questioning.

And I think the intentionality of his storytelling has changed, and therein lies the magic. And I know that now he’s at a new cusp. He wants to do something else, and and people will eventually discover what that is. But I don’t think he will now ever abandon that intentionality because I don’t think it can be separated from him anymore.

Patralekhaa, you have a really exciting lineup of films coming up. So how excited are you as an actor?

Because it’s so exciting that, you know, I’ve been waiting to be at this point for many, many years. And, actually, the boom began when, the pandemic happened.

And, honestly, I’ve got a lot of works during the rise of OTT during the pandemic. And it’s so exciting because I’m getting to work like I said, I’m getting to work with such different directors with such different vision, and every set teaches you so much. And it’s just so exciting to go to different different sets and learning.

Working as an Entertainment journalist for over five years, covering stories, reporting, and interviewing various film personalities of the film industry see more