Usually in the film business, production and casting are two such completely different processes that are done by different people. Casting directors help the director of any film bring their vision alive with the most suitable actors. But in the upcoming Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer Haddi, producer Raadhika Nanda took up the casting duty for herself.
Raadhika is quite a visionary when it comes to the casting department, and what makes it all the more exemplary is that Haddi is her debut production. And taking up the casting duty wasn’t an inevitable decision but a conscious choice for her. “Yes it was a conscious decision to cast for the film as I knew whom I wanted to cast. I had a wish list according to the character sketches, and I had the clear vision of working with those people,” she shares.
Haddi is a very important film as it aims to give a worthy representation to the trans community. Nawazuddin, who is the lead in the film, plays a transgender person and it was Raadhika who cast him. And not just him, she also cast Anurag Kashyap, Ila Arun, Vipin Sharma, Zeeshan Ayub Khan, Shreedhar Dubey, Saharsh Kumar Shukla and Saurabh Sachdeva for Haddi.
Sharing her experience of the process, Raadhika reveals that almost every actor was very cooperative since it was such a strong subject and they would get to explore so much through this film. But not everyone said yes in the first go. She reveals, “Ila ji and Zeeshan didn’t say yes initially. But after thinking it through about the film and the subject, they came back to me and said, yes let’s do it. This film has a lot to explore and for me, the whole process of casting was very adventurous and quite fun.”
