Celebrated filmmaker Shekhar Kapur is presently busy with pre-production work of his next directorial venture Masoom: The Next Generation. As the title aptly suggests, the film is a sequel to his 1983 film Masoom, which featured Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi in lead roles along with Tanuja, Supriya Pathak, and Saeed Jaffrey.
Kapur has now confirmed that he has roped in Azmi to play a pivotal part in Masoom: The Next Generation. He confirmed in an Instagram post about having a telephonic conversation with the veteran actress.
“So, when Shabana Azmi asked me to at least tell the story of Masoom: The Next Generation, I balked. I hesitated. I was in London and she on the other end of the phone in Mumbai. How do (you) narrate a story to the actor you need to play the main part on the phone? How do you get into the zone on the phone? So, after a lot of pauses and umms, and aahs, Shabana asked me, ‘Shekhar I will do any film with you anyway, but do you have a story’,” Kapur wrote on Instagram.
He continued, “That challenge suddenly propelled me into the ‘Zone’. I was no longer on the end of the phone; I was in the world of my story. I was with characters as if they were there… speaking to me. I could smell the physical space of my story. I was in the ‘Zone. I heard a gentle sob and silence. I had managed to pull Shabana into the ‘Zone’ on the phone from London to Mumbai. After a long pause, Shabana said, ‘It’s beautiful, Shekhar, you have to make this film’.”
Masoom was an official adaptation of the 1980 novel Man, Woman and Child by Erich Segal, which was also adapted into a Malayalam film, Olangal, and an American film, Man, Woman and Child.
Radhika Apte
A still from Sister Midnight