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Stepping into 'Jubilee' with Aditi Rao Hydari: Five highlights from shooting an ode to Bollywood’s Golden Age

The Amazon Prime Video series releases in two parts, starting April 7

Actress Aditi Rao Hydari possesses a distinctive quality that sets her apart from her contemporaries - a kind of regality and charm which when translated on screen makes one almost nostalgic for a world where stars still had the allure of mystery about them. It’s no wonder then that the star, who is descended from Hyderabad nobility, shines in historical dramas, stepping back in time into worlds that are a perfect fit for her talent and looks.

“I do love period pieces,” said Aditi in a recent chat with City Times about her new series Jubilee, that unveils the stories and dreams that gave birth to the modern Hindi film industry. Jubilee is directed by Vikramaditya Motwane and also stars Aparshakti Khurana, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Sidhant Gupta, and Wamiqa Gabbi.

Aditi, who plays a famous actress called Sumitra Kumari in Jubilee, shared, “I think I love drama, more than anything else! What I like about period pieces is the fact that you take a little bit of history and there is so much creation around it. There is a certain sense of unknowing which ends at a kind of magical quality. You get to go into a world that you’ve only heard about. But I also feel that all the people that I have worked with, especially on period dramas including Taj: Divided by Blood, which is set in the 16th century, kept the drama very relevant, and I find that even with Jubilee.

"As an actor I always keep reminding myself to not posture and not make it gimmicky, but remember that we are human beings. So our responses are real and our feelings are real. I have to connect to people. Also, period dramas are shot very beautifully… your looks, your clothes.. there’s that romanticism attached to all of it. When we look at old films, there’s always that sigh, where time just stands still, and that moment just becomes very special.”

Aditi said the appeal of Jubilee for modern viewers lies in “a kind of voyeurism”.

“The curiosity people have about the lives of actors and stars, what happens on a set, and how films are made… Jubilee is like a very-large scale curated Instagram on steroids. As a viewer I would be excited because it’s a world I don’t know.”

The Padmaavat actress shared with City Times five highlights from working on Jubilee:

The allure of cinema’s Golden Age

What appealed to Aditi most about director and co-creator Vikramaditya Motwane’s visionary series, were the “human stories” featured in the creation of this thrilling yet poetic world where the stakes run high for every character’s dreams, passion, ambition, and love.

“We’ve all seen black and white films, whether it’s our grandparents’ or parents’ nostalgia. We’ve been for retrospectives. But the lives and struggles behind those creations, the visionaries and passion with which they worked and what they probably went through to achieve whatever they did… just being able to step into that world and be a part of something that our generation doesn’t know anything about, apart from just watching those films, was really exciting. Even as an audience, honestly, people really want to know about actors and what we do; I think for our generation, our lives are so much more accessible, and at that time they weren’t.”

Bringing back the magic and the mystery

In this day and age when there is so much scrutiny of stars and the industry as well, can a series like this bring back that magic of the old world for the audience? “Every time and every era has its good and bad. When we look at history, we tend to be optimistic or look at the magical things in those periods and that legend gets carried on. I’m sure there were struggles as well, human ups and downs, jealousies, etc. And this show actually delves into all of that, which is what I find very interesting about it!”

The air of mystery surrounding larger-than-life figures is definitely appealing, she added. “What we think of as ‘stars’, people we haven’t met, people we only watch on screen, and what value they hold for us in our lives. Those unattainable, ephemeral, almost mythical creatures who come alive on screen, we actually know very little about. Whatever we know about them is just hearsay. I personally wish there was still that magical quality about stars, and I hope to bring in a little more, almost responsibility, towards the work that I do. Where I can connect with the people who encourage me and love me, but also maintain that quality about an actor, which is slightly mysterious, and which then makes your content come alive, for the audience.”

Becoming Sumitra Kumari

In Jubilee, Aditi plays the role of a vintage, almost regal, cinema superstar, Sumitra Kumari, who is as beautiful as she is troubled. Aditi said the character “is so far removed” from who she is in real life. “It has been so delicious playing her; it’s actually one of the few times where I have been cast so against my grain. It is a big challenge, but it’s also a lot of fun. I do believe that the fun that I had is because I felt very secure, nurtured, and also challenged by a director who I could really surrender to in this process. Everything, from the way you hold your neck, to the way you walk, to the way that you look at a person, is so against your own instinct."

And while she found Sumitra exciting, Aditi also found a way to be able to empathize with her. “You see two very distinct parts of her personality - one is her public persona where she has a wall in front of her, and doesn’t let anybody into her space. There is that quality of walking into a room and commanding respect just for who she is. But I think what I connected to and what I relished was the fact that (and maybe this was my own little imagination) somewhere she also has the heart of a little girl. She has a yearning for love; she is lonely. She is like this princess trapped in a castle. She finds this one man who is also an actor and she sees that he brings out that longing for love and that little girl in her. That, I found, gave me security about this character and its layers; even when I was playing a ‘goddess’ like Sumitra Kumari, maybe when she is making people squirm in her presence, just by her very sharp tongue, there is also the child in her enjoying that.”

“Breathing the same air” as the "iconic" Prosenjit Chatterjee

Aditi is joined by a stellar line-up of talent in Jubilee, including Bengali superstar Prosenjit Chatterjee, who plays her husband and the powerful owner of Roy Talkies, Srikant Roy. What was it like working with him?

“He’s a very senior actor. I mean this is his 350th project! And we would all sit around him and be like, okay, how many hours must you have spent on a set? We’re all doing these mad calculations and he’s just laughing. But it was so wonderful to breathe the same air and be in the same space as him, for all of us. Dada has done all kinds of work, so we can’t even talk about him in the same breath. He’s too iconic. But as a person, he’s very loving, very chill, very kind. We didn’t feel nervous around him for even half a second.”

Sparring (and bonding) with Aparshakti Khurana

One of the main stories in Jubilee revolves around Binod Das (Aparshakti Khurana), who goes from being a nobody till a car accident alters his fate; he takes on a new identity and becomes a top movie star, Madan Kumar. Aditi, who had a lot of scenes with Aparshakti, was thrilled with the competition that went on between their characters on screen.

“It was so wonderful to have these two characters who are playing superstars - a guy and a girl who are sparring as to who is the bigger star. I thought that was so cool. Here it wasn’t about gender; it was just about pride, talent, and artistry and it was just very interesting to do that. Off the set was “chill”, she said. “I think Aparshakti and I also are very childlike - the moment the camera was switched off we were always chatting about random stuff, whether it was fashion, or what we were eating for lunch!”

The first part of Jubilee releases April 7 on Amazon Prime Video, with the second part streaming on April 14