Exclusive| Shridhar Raghavan reveals a Shah Rukh Khan torture scene, backstories of characters never made it to Pathaan: ‘Maybe they’ll release on YouTube’

In an interview with indianexpress.com, Shridhar Raghavan decodes the writing process of Pathaan, how Shah Rukh Khan worked closely with the team in building the film and what it means to mount a film that’s turning cinema halls into stadiums.

Edited excerpts:

What were the pressure levels you were operating at before the film released?

As writers, we finished our work three years ago. The writing process was pleasure than pressure. I have a good rapport with Adi, Sid, Abbas so it was like three-four guys sitting and jamming, thinking what all we can do with this.

How much did the script change because of COVID? Because the film mentions coronavirus, transmission…

All this was written pre-COVID but we shot during COVID. So obviously we contemporarised it and Abbas added dialogues referring to what was happening. Sid came with the idea of doing a film about a mutated virus. Adi and he were already talking about doing a big action film with Shah Rukh Khan. It seemed like a fun plot but when COVID struck, it got a bit serious. I was a bit nervous at that point of time, that is this the right time to do a film on virus during the pandemic. But Adi and Sid had a lot of conviction. So, nothing changed, but obviously because we were shooting through it, a lot of improvisation, lines were added to reflect the times we were in. There were no script changes at all. It’s updated that’s all.

Shridhar Raghavan deep dives into the making of Pathaan. (Photo: PR Handout)

Can you give us a sense of how exactly the writing process happen?

I was working closely in tandem with Adi and Sid. They came up with this idea of a spy actioner to me and then we sat together. I knew that they were keen to do this film with Shah Rukh, so we were designing a character which would be interesting to see Shah Rukh in an action avatar. Over three-four months there were a lot of story discussions, post that we worked on outlines, act structure, broke it down to scenes. The idea was how do we make it fun, thrilling, entertaining. We spent five-six months working in different outlines, writing, re-writing. At that point we had started meeting Shah Rukh and sharing what we were doing.

Shah Rukh loves action films…

He had tons of inputs, he’s heavily into this genre! When we first started writing he would have a lot of interesting comments. He had literally put down 70-100 pages of his understanding of the genre. I was blown! It became an interesting reference point because when I was reading it, I was like ‘Ya, this is valid, this is useful.’ Like the idea of a team of people who aren’t allowed to serve anymore, and he bands them together while being in a hospital, that came from him if I remember right. A lot of terrific ideas came from him.

We were discussing making the character vulnerable which normally makes you think, ‘Oh wow is this the route you really want to take’ but he was very gung-ho about It. The idea of a vulnerable, slightly self-deprecating, humourous character who doesn’t mind taking the backseat in a sequence in a certain manner… We tried to osmotically take in a lot of Shah Rukh’s personality so the character got layered, because we had the advantage that the star who was playing it was part of our brainstorming process.

Sid is terrific at spectacles; he enjoys larger-than-life stuff. Adi enjoys drama and is good with sequences which connect. Abbas is a funny man, he brought in humour. I was focused particularly on rooting each character. If you see the interval sequence of the film, Sid came up with that. I had written a completely different action sequence for how they break into this impenetrable place in Russia. But Sid had a more wonderful, flamboyant heist film idea.

And the post-credit scene with Shah Rukh and Salman?

The last scene when Shah Rukh and Salman are talking, when I saw the film even, I was taken aback because I hadn’t written it! It wasn’t there in my script draft. That Adi sir did. When he had thought of it, it was added somewhere else in the, right after the train sequence. But I think when they were discussing the edit, Uday (Chopra) came up with the idea that this might work in the end! So it was that collaborative.

In the trailer there’s a torture sequence that Shah Rukh goes through—maybe they’ll release it later on YouTube—and in the film there were many scenes which we wrote on paper but never shot. Every character in the JOCR squad has a huge back story, which we wrote. We then thought we don’t require it in this particular film, but it was important for us because someday when we’ll do something else with these characters, it’ll also help the actors because they’d know these characters inside out. It was great fun.

Jim was a fascinating character and such a delicious villain.

I’m actually very proud of that character. An action film hinges on the villain— the greater the villain, the greater the hero has to become to overcome this adversary. If you just have a black and white villain with two-dimensional purpose, you kind of lose faith. You need somebody who is evil, twisted, somebody who has rage and in his own head is a hero. Jim is a guy if you sit with him across the table over a drink, you will wind up working with him, because you would understand where he comes from. If you sat with everyone in the film, you would understand where they come from.

Dimple Kapadia’s character is about mid-life crisis, trying to understand who you are. When I saw my dad retire, his center of gravity changed. He was a funny man because even after retirement he would go to the office and sit on his chair. So Dimple’s character is representative of people who don’t want to let go, because they still have a lot to do. She is mirrored in Shah Rukh’s character, who feels, ‘So what I am injured, I have a lot to do.’ The actors added a lot to what we wrote. The vulnerability, which on paper I couldn’t have imagined, was brought in by Shah Rukh and a certain cold seething anger and betrayal which you can only be hinted on paper, was brought on by John.

Even the way Deepika’s character was written, it was so refreshing to see a female part not relegated to the sidelines in an action film.

In this film, there are two strong female characters. There is Deepika and Dimple.  This was an opportunity that, ‘hey, we haven’t really explored a really cool espionage person who is a female.’ You go all the way, there are so many great characters, including Mata Hari and others. We had a terrific opportunity because we also had great actors. All the main characters were so much fun to write. Even Ashutosh Rana for example, we had a whole backstory about him, like what does he do when he goes back home at night? It’s not on screen, but Adi, Sid and I know!

Pathaan the character is religiously agnostic, he is fostered by an Afghan family, the film doesn’t paint anyone as evil, there is no drummed up drama.

This is the kind of cinema we grew up on. If we go back and think about the films of Vijay Anand and Manmohan Desai, you will find that they were glorious, you didn’t get into any of these questions. You went in to have a damn good time with characters you believed in. It didn’t matter where they came from. Look at films like Amar Akbar Anthony, Naseeb, Yaaon Ki Baarat. We all grew up on films of these filmmakers, including Prakash Mehra, Yash Chopra, Ramesh Sippy. That storytelling was beautiful, flamboyant, irreverent and at the same time took its characters seriously. These films are not easy to write! I am a student of that cinema.

You are the mentor writer for YRF’s spy universe. What’s the road map like?

Adi has conceptualized everything; I am helping him design it. What we are trying to do is to take the characters ahead who have already been established with further adventures, have crossovers. We will be revisiting certain characters who somebody would have thought, ‘Oh that person is gone!’ May be not! We will be bringing in other characters, who we are currently discussing. We also don’t want to bloat. The idea is to explore the genre inside out, because it has tremendous potential.