Do You Wanna Partner: Nishant Nayak on casting Tamannaah Bhatia and Diana Penty

After dabbling in nonfiction all his career creator Nishant Nayak harboured a dream of making a fiction show He says it took him and his team almost five years to bring the show to screen The Amazon Prime Video series Do You Wanna Partner starring Diana Penty Tamannaah Bhatia Jaaved Jaaferi Nakuul Mehta and Shweta Tiwari among others was he shares a product of the pandemic In conversation with midday Nayak discusses how he and Mithun Gangopadhyay developed the idea did intense research of the beer industry and how much the script changed from start to finishExcerpts from the interviewWhat made you move from nonfiction to fictionTo be honest I havenrsquot moved It was just something that I wanted to try out I still work as a nonfiction director Actually I wrote this story as a pandemic experiment I was always keen to direct an original story I wanted to either do a short film or a longform content My cinematographer Mithun Gangopadhyay cocreator had written a couple of concepts and this is the one that I really liked So we decided to develop it together We gave ourselves a month to write the entire story Then we shopped it around It took us about nine months to get through to Dharmatic Entertainment and then they got Amazon Prime Video on board Then we set up a writersrsquo room Nonfiction is still very exciting and I enjoy itJaaved Jaaferi in lsquoDo You Wanna PartnerrsquoHow long did it take for you to convince others mdash producers platforms and actors mdash about the storyI was actually involved in narrating it to a lot of the cast before we finally went on floors in May last year But it took us about eight to nine months The whole story of these two girls who want to enter a maledominated industry having to create a fictitious male partner because of the circumstances I think caught everyonersquos ear Initially it was set in the US and there was a bit of a video game component I wanted to localise it and craft beer is something that we both identified with In all it has taken five years from the time we put pen to paper to you actually seeing the episode todayHow has the response beenWersquove been getting a mixed response from outsiders and friends from the industry I think the whole oneliner really appealed to everyone People have liked that we integrated a mixed cast from across movies and television People have found the heightened sense of disbelief Some people wanted something a little closer to realism Therersquos been a little bit of critique on that But largely I think people have really enjoyed seeing Diana and Tamannaah in a series The fact that Jaaved Jaaferi is also back in a very endearing role has got love We also got a lot of positive response to Jaaved Jaaferirsquos role I had directed Shark Tank India so itrsquos sort of continuing the whole entrepreneur cycle The music was also well likedLR Diana Penty and Tamannaah Bhatia in lsquoDo You Wanna PartnerrsquoHow much of the original idea changed in the five yearsI think the essential plot of Vikram Walia played by Neeraj Kabi having a connection to Tamannaahrsquos fatherrsquos business failing and that becoming a mission for her to see through stayed the same Laila played by Shweta Tiwari was originally a sketchy male financier I am glad Shweta ended up playing it A few small characters and turning points changed I have no regrets about what changed It had an army of good hearts behind itHow did you think about teaming up Penty and Bhatia for the showThey both came in cold because they are from very different backgrounds Tamannaah is a huge star in the industry For Diana it was her first OTT show We did readings and workshops together They both loved the story And it workedon cameraHow much research into the beer industry did you do for the show And how much beer did you consume while making itWe needed a cool product Initially we were planning to go with video games Mithun my cocreator had also been a hobby homebrewer years ago He was familiar with the process and we found the right experts along the way We of course consumed a lot of beer while writing it The story of Bira was a huge inspiration Dharma put us in touch with a very fine researcher Dipti Kharude who knew a lot of people in the beer community During the research we learnt that there were not many female brewers in the Indian market Then we got in touch with Lynette Pires from the Women Brewers Collective who is based in Bengaluru That was an interesting insight we came across Since then there have been about six to seven female master brewers Two of them are consultants for multiple brands In fact Pratik Kansara of Rolling Mills was the main consulting brewer who helped us on the shootNishant Nayakrsquos filmography lsquoThe Traitorsrsquo lsquoShark Tank Indiarsquo lsquoFear Factorrsquo lsquoMTV Unpluggedrsquo lsquoMasterchefrsquo lsquoCoke Studiorsquo lsquoTop ModelrsquoIn the nonfiction spaceNishant Nayak is currently preparing to shoot the next season of lsquoShark Tank Indiarsquo ldquoI am also looking at fiction sometime next year But now something exciting in nonfiction is happeningrdquo