Felt as if I am working with an old colleague, says Pratik Gandhi of director Tigmanshu Dhulia

In the upcoming Disney+ Hotstar show The Great Indian Murder (2022), Pratik Gandhi plays a character, Suraj Yadav, who was created just for the series. Yadav is not part of Vikas Swarup’s novel, Six Suspects, from which the show is adapted.

Gandhi, who was previously seen in the Hindi film Bhavai (2021), spoke of the experience of working with co-star Richa Chadha and director Tigmanshu Dhulia. Chadha plays Sudha Bhardwaj, an investigating officer from the crime branch who joins Yadav, an officer of the Central Bureau of Investigation, on the case.

"There are a lot of things I admire about Richa, but one thing that I admire the most is [that] she is very passionate about her work and very pure at heart and thought," Gandhi said. "Whatever she thinks she says, I can see that purity and passion in whatever she does.”

The Scam 1992 (2020) actor also said he had admired Dhulia for long and said yes to the project without reading the script as he wanted to work with the filmmaker. He added that Dhulia's National award-winning film Paan Singh Tomar (2012), starring Irrfan Khan, was a favourite of his.

Gandhi said, “[Dhulia] is an actor himself, so it is an interesting combination of actor-director, because that makes our job as an actor very easy. He understands a lot of nuances; he gives you a free hand to experiment and improvise. It felt as if I am working with an old colleague and that's how the equation became. This is my first project with him and I met him for the first time just for this project, but I will relish this relationship for a long time.”

The Great Indian Murder’s ensemble cast also includes Raghubir Yadav, Ashutosh Rana, Paoli Dam, Jatin Goswami and Shashank Arora. The murder mystery, produced by Ajay Devgn and Priti Vinay Sinha, will be premiered on Disney+ Hotstar on 4 February in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Bengali.