It’s not every day that a project ticks all the boxes, but IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack proved to be exactly that. Vijay VermaThe Netflix thriller, created by Anubhav Sinha, offers a new take on the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814, which was carrying 173 passengers from Kathmandu to Delhi. To bring this chapter of Indian aviation to life, the creator and co-director enlisted some of Hindi cinema’s finest actors, including Naseeruddin ShahPankaj Kapur, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa and Dibyendu Bhattacharya. “Even if I tried, I had no reason not to do the show. The fact that I got the chance to work with him and this star-studded cast was tempting enough,” Varma smiles.
The fact that the subject is part of modern Indian history was another motivation for Varma to accept. “The script is gripping. I wrote 200 pages in the blink of an eye. It is based on an incident that is modern history for us. It changed the way the aviation industry works.”
The actor plays the pilot in the six-part series. To embody his character and the delicate nature of the events that happened inside the plane, he spent a lot of time with the real-life captain, Devi Sharan. Recalling a moment that became his biggest reward for working on the series, Varma shares, “We were in Delhi with the real-life captain. A lady introduced herself and said that she was on that flight. At that time, she was 24 or 25; now, she has two children. I was deeply emotional when she expressed her feelings for him.
“Their gratitude to the captain, saying, ‘You saved our lives and my two sons are pilots today.’ I thought it was something like that, choosing to make someone out of your children, when you were in such a difficult situation. The children were beaming with happiness when they met the captain who saved their mother’s life. I can never forget this.”
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