In Neeraj Pandey’s Taskaree, Emraan Hashmi plays a customs officer at the airport who, along with his team, races against time, overcomes bureaucratic hurdles, fights political pressure and even a threat to life, in order to carry out his duty. Translating to ‘smuggling’, Taskaree brings together an ensemble cast comprising actors like Amruta Khanvilkar, Nandish Sandhu, Sharad Kelkar, Zoya Afroz and more. With the show now streaming on Netflix, t2 chatted with Emraan and Amruta.

Did the fact that the world of airport customs has rarely, if at all, been explored on our screens count as one of the primary factors of wanting to do Taskaree?

Emraan Hashmi: That is always the hope and endeavour as an actor... to bring in a bit of intrigue and novelty into everything you do, especially in an environment now where things seem to have become a little repetitive. Just because something may have worked, we see people trying to churn out the same thing over and over again. Taskaree stands out, I feel, because very few shows can stand on their own and do something new, something brave. No one has really explored the world of smuggling in the domain of air travel and I found that very exciting and intriguing. I play a customs officer (named Arjun Meena) and I can’t remember the last time when the life and work of a customs officer was the focus of a film or series. Even otherwise, they rarely get credit or acknowledgement for what they do. Taskaree does that, it brings something new to the table.

They are pretty much unsung heroes...

Emraan: Yes. Most people think that their job just involves scanning bags at the airport. But it is, actually, a lot of work. There is a well-oiled system that works behind the scenes. It is remarkable how the government, these officers and the law enforcement bodies work in tandem, with people from other countries, on a daily basis, to bust smuggling rackets. They simply do their duty and seek no acknowledgement.

What has the predominant reaction so far been like? The series is at the top of the Netflix charts...

Amruta Khanvilkar: Today, the audience is always wanting more, be it cinema, OTT or any other medium. They are also consuming so much content and they want to see something different every time, something which has been researched deeply and executed well. Taskaree ticks all those boxes. It is made by a great maker (Neeraj Pandey), is on such a popular OTT medium (Netflix) and the wide manner in which it has reached the audience is amazing.

This is an unexplored world and what has caught people’s attention is... how does this all happen? As passengers, we give our bags for scanning at the airport and then we often complain when it takes time to come back to us. This series looks at what happens, how does the network behind it work, what is the back-end of the customs system like.... A lot of detail has gone into it, and I think that is something that has caught the eye of the audience.
Emraan: I am extremely critical of my work. But yesterday, I sat down and watched five episodes of Taskaree back to back, and I was hooked... there is not a dull moment in the show. It is pacy, fun, thrilling, smart and edgy. The thrill and that joyride is maintained throughout. It also has doses of humour in places and people are liking it.

I was just talking to my group of friends who said they started streaming the show with the intention of watching a few episodes, but they ended up bingeing all! They actually cancelled their plans of going out in order to watch the show at one go. The cliffhanger moments are such that they simply breezed through the show. The bona fide thriller audience is very smart and as a maker, one needs to be ahead of the curve. That is what Taskaree has done.
Amruta: The good thing about Taskaree is that bahut intellectualise nahin kiya gaya hai cheezon ko. Bahut simple aur quirky way mein rakha gaya hai, and I think that is its USP. Even technically, the show is very well made. There are many instances where a customs officer is walking or doing his work and the camera views it all from his back, in a way exploring his world as he does his duty. These nuances make Taskaree stand apart.

What was it like being part of Neeraj Pandey’s world and his vision? The worlds of thrill he creates have almost always worked...

Emraan: There is a certain clarity with which he steps into a show as a director or writer. He also has a great team. He has built a solid body of work... he is known for his matured style of storytelling and he is very consistent with that. His visual depiction, sense of writing, the nuance, the shock elements, the edge-of-the-seat moments... they are all top notch.

He is also the kind of director who knows when to step back and let the actor take charge and encourage what they bring to the table. Sometimes you have directors who are very stifling in what they want. They stifle you with specifics. With Neeraj Pandey, the specifics are present in the script, but then he also lets you soar with your ideas on set, and your own interpretation of the character. He will, of course, step in if he feels he wants something to be done in another way, but he doesn’t hold his actors back. That is always the sign of a good director.

He is also someone who shoots very fast. We shot Taskaree in record time in eight cities around the world. Any other director would have taken double the time he did, and I am saying this from the experience of having made 50 films so far with all kinds of filmmakers.
Amruta: The way he shoots scenes is a lot like how it is done in theatre... when the camera turns on, as an actor, you don’t know how long and to what extent it is going to follow you. And there are so many things happening in that one shot! I loved the whole dynamic of shooting for Taskaree because I come from a theatre background — you have to be on your toes, you have to be alert, you have to deliver your dialogues, you have to react to somebody, there are people coming in.... On any given day, our set had 200 people, but the way Neeraj sir works is so dynamic and pacy. Every character is so well written that the actor has to just come in, follow his instructions and perform. It is that simple.

To end on a light note, Hindi commercial cinema of the ’70s and ’80s often had smuggling as a big plot point, depicted through various stereotypes that still remain memorable. Can you recall any favourite tropes used in this sub-genre?

Emraan: Yes, there were many... like gold being smuggled on a boat to the port and a lone torch light being used as a signal (laughs). That was, of course, the (Amitabh) Bachchan era of the Angry Young Man and smuggling was a theme in many of those films. We did get it back in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai (2010, starring Emraan and Ajay Devgn), which was a kind of tribute to that era. I was a big fan of those films. Also, the political and social environment of that time was such... there were gangsters, there was smuggling, there was talk of the film industry’s inner workings being controlled by the underworld. The theme died out eventually, but there is a lot of nostalgia attached to it.