Kabir Singh Bhandari

The latest season of Special Ops deals with the abduction of an Artificial Intelligence scientist, focussing this time round on a silent war in the form of cyber-terrorism and cyber security. In fact, Meta and JioHotstar recently partnered to launch an awareness campaign using the world of Special Ops 2.0 to highlight the dangers of rising online scams.

For anyone who has seen even a single season of Special Ops, it is clear that it is the most intelligent Indian series made on the subject till date, rivalling any Hollywood series with absolute ease. Take a few concepts, for example. The interrogation of Himmat Singh (Kay Kay Menon), a member of the Research and Analysis Wing, apart from displaying the acting chops of all three characters in those scenes, also gives a deep dive into the money which goes into funding several international covert operations. The action sequences are on point. And we get a proper understanding of the pressures of handling such operations under needling and constant obstacles in the form of politicians, diplomacy, and what not.

In a roundtable interaction with Kay Kay Menon, Vinay Pathak, and Neeraj Pandey, we had a fun back-and-forth about a few series-related points and some more about personalities.

Vinay Pathak and his sense of humour

Vinay, who plays sub-inspector Abbas Sheikh, said he was very lucky to get a character that was carved right, and all the references were something that he grew up with, as he comes from a police family. But where does he get his sense of humour from? “Honestly, I have to give credit to all you guys (journalists). I’m not just saying it like that, I’m very serious about it. Because you guys are not easy to deal with! (Laughs) And it’s been the third decade of my career. But I’m saying this with a lot of respect and love.”

Neeraj Pandey on 1.5 and the Bengali factor

“In the aftermath of the reception that we got for S1, we decided that for 1.5, an interesting aspect could be Himmat’s back story, told from the perspective of Abbas. I showed Tota the way he hasn’t been portrayed in Bengali films ever, something which we were proud of doing.” For the ones who haven’t seen S2, Tota plays a senior R&AW officer who gets killed in Delhi. In fact, not only Tota — Neeraj used Prosenjit and Jeet in Khakee: The Bengal Chapter as characters they probably haven’t been given the opportunity to play before. Jeet was IPS officer Arjun Maitra, with his deadpan stare, and Prosenjit was Barun Roy, a high-ranking politician of the ruling party in Bengal.

Kay Kay Menon on who Himmat Singh is based on

“It’s supposedly the norm that you have to start living the life of the character for months and years in preparation for the role. I’ve read so many interviews of people, even in Hollywood, who say this. That might be their process, but it’s not mine, so I don’t cater to that. I would not want to meet someone from the intelligence services and observe his mannerisms, but instead, I try and use as much of my imagination as possible and borrow from the imagination of the theatre and the person who’s directing that particular sequence. It’s much more satisfying for me as an actor.”