Last Week Ekta Kapoor’s Mahabharat premiered on 9X. The show began with a bang with Draupadi’s disrobing scene. Faced paced and contemporary, Ekta’s Pandavas sport long locks and tattoos on the arms and chest. If the first episode is anything to go by, Ekta Kapoor already has a winner on her hands. Here she takes about her pet project.
Mahabharat is finally on air?
I wanted to see everyone’s expressions. And the response has been a relief. Frankly when I saw the first episode, I liked what I saw. Did you?
Yes. But Mukesh Khanna seemed to hate it.
(laughs) I know some people hated it. I was prepared for it. On Tuesday Mukesh Khanna went on television to blast our ’sets’ for Mahabharat. He didn’t realize we shot at the Amer fort in Jaipur. He said, "Yeh to bilkul authentic set nahin hai.’ My response, ‘Yeh to asli location hai, Sir.’ We shot the first two episodes there and it took me seven days .
It is being directed by more than one director?
At any given time we’ve four different directors working on four different units of Mahabharat. There’s a creative head supervising each and every episode. We’ve only canned 9 episodes in 3 months. Each episode takes 11 days as compared to an average episode of my other soaps which takes 1 ½ days.
How will you cope with the deadlines?
I’ll increase the number of units. But I won’t compromise on quality. I’m loving the feedback I’m getting. A friend from London called to say, ‘Dude, you just re-made Ben Hur for me’. I died.
You’ve tampered with the structure of the Mahabharat by starting with the cheer-haran episode?
Yes! I decided to do my own take and take on the criticism from the very first episode. I used the cheer-haran like a prelude to grab viewers’ attention. People are shocked by our beginning. This is my most ambitious project and I’ve been ready for the raised eyebrows. Every change in the original Mahabharat has been done in close consultation with me. I don’t want this to be just another one of my soaps that comes and goes. Twenty years from now I want someone to call up another producer and say, ‘Dude you just made the new version of Ekta’s Mahabharat.’
Are you marketing your Mahabharat on DVD?
Of course. We’re already getting eye-popping offers for DVD deals.
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EKTA KAPOOR EK BUHAT CHALU OR RANDI KISM KI AURAT HAI, US KI SHAKAL SE BUHAT MANHOOSIYAT TAPAKTI HAI. THATS GOOD THAT SHE DOESN’T ACT, IT’S BETTER FOR HER TO STAY BEHIND