"Four More Shots Please!" will come to an end with the release of the fourth season but its actors Sayani Gupta and Maanvi Gagroo are not ready to say goodbye just yet.
The two actors hope that the Prime Video show returns in some form in the next few years. The series follows the story of four unapologetically flawed women -- Gupta, Bani J, Kirti Kulhari, and Gagroo -- as they live, love, make mistakes and discover new things. The first season released in 2019 and became an instant hit. It was followed by a second season in 2020 and a third in 2022. The fourth season will debut on Prime Video on December 19.
Gupta believes "Four More Shots Please!" has the potential to have multiple seasons like the popular American series, "Sex and the City".
"I still feel it's a show that can go on till eight to 10 seasons, it can go on forever, like ‘Sex and the City’, and then have the recent one. I honestly feel deep inside that never say never. So, every time you are saying final, it's feeling more final than we actually thought of it," the actor told PTI in an interview.
Gagroo teased saying, "It's the final season, but it's not a final goodbye because we will continue to live in your heart." Recalling the last day of the shoot for the show, the "Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan" actor and the team got quite emotional.
"There were tears and all of that happened. But somehow when I saw it written (on the poster), in literal writing, and it said final season, that's when it kind of hit me," she said.
Created by Rangita Pritish Nandy and Ishita Pritish Nandy, the final season brings back the lead quartet -- Gupta, Bani and Kulhari, and Gagroo. The show is developed and written by Devika Bhagat, with dialogues by Ishita Moitra.
Gupta, known for her nuanced performance in “Article 15”, and “Margarita with a Straw”, said “Four More Shots Please!” turned out to be a turning point in her career.
“A big part of my career, like how people see me, strangers call me Damini Rizvi Roy, which is the biggest compliment an actor can get. The kind of love we get globally, the letters we get and a lot of people who say that this show has touched their lives. Our careers pivoted, but this show is and will always remain a massive part of all our lives,” she said.
The three actors – Gupta, Gagroo, and Bani fondly recalled how they came on board for the show.
Bani, who plays a queer character named Umang, a gym trainer, in the show, said she was determined to not play the part in a “caricaturish” manner.
“I read the script and I was like, ‘Let's do it’. I didn't have too many questions; I didn't have hesitation or apprehension. Most people would think a lot about playing a queer character saying, ‘nope’, as they don't want to get typecast. But that wasn't even a thing for me to consider as a reason to not do it.
"I was like, this is such a cool opportunity to show a character and how it should be portrayed as an actual human being and not in a caricaturish way, which is what most of the industry does with queer characters," Bani said.
Gupta revealed the makers had approached her in 2017 with another part but she found the role of the investigative journalist to be more compelling.
"I loved all the four parts, but Damini spoke back to me. At that point, they had somebody else in mind, like a star (for the role of Damini),” she said, adding, after sometime the producer Rangita Nandy approached her yet again but this time for the role of Damini.
Gagroo said when she was offered the series it reminded her of the Sarah Jessica Parker-fronted show, “Sex and the City”.
“When I first read the script, I was like, ‘This is like ‘Sex and the City’, this is India's ‘Sex and the City’, and I’ve to be a part of it, as I'm a big fan of that show. They (makers) shared their vision and I loved every bit of it. I knew that I had to do this,” the actor, who plays Siddhi Patel, a rich brat, said.
“What struck me most was that up until that point, every time there were stories with women in the center, they were usually about all the bad stuff that happens to them, like whether you're talking about femicide or violence or but there was never anything where women were celebrated, or humanized.
"Here female friendship was at the core of it and that's exactly what resonated with people. And that's why we're here, four seasons on and eight years later,” Gagroo said.
The final season will also bring back Prateik S M Patil, Milind Soman, Rajeev Siddhartha, Lisa Ray and Ankur Rathee, while Dino Morea, Anasuya Sengupta and Kunaal Roy Kapur are the newcomers.
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