“Packing Punches to Braving the Rains, never a Boring Day on the Sets of Reeta Sanyal”, Actor Ankur Rathee Recalls

Mumbai may be grappling with October heat now but the scene was quite different just a month back. The unforgiving Mumbai rains did not just trouble the office goers and commuters but lashed on B-Town causing quite a bit of disruption. Ankur Rathee recalls shooting for gruelling action sequences of his show Reeta Sanyal which were scheduled in the middle of the monsoon mania.

Ankur said, “The only recurring nightmare on this set were the monsoons. I’d be scaling a wall when suddenly the rain would come pouring down as if Zeus himself had been brought to tears. We’d quickly take off our harnesses as people rushed with umbrellas to save our costumes. Once we sat under a makeshift tent for an hour waiting for the rain to stop. It flooded the set and even began seeping into my shoes”.

Speaking about the action scenes Ankur added, “Packing punches to braving the rains, never a boring day on the sets of Reeta Sanyal. There is so much action in this show. We’re either chasing someone or being chased. At gun point or pointing the gun. I’d come back from work bruised and bleeding some days, but loved every second of the action. However, some of the action sequences were so fantastical that they defied physics and that caused some friction between me and the action director, Ajay Thakur. He kept pushing the limits of what’s humanly possible and I kept trying to insert logic into sequences where it didn’t belong. These clashing approaches lead to heated debate more than once on set, until I realized that this genre of action required more imagination than I was allowing. When I surrendered it made the scenes that much more fun to perform. At times I felt like a flying cop given how high I jumped with the help of a harness and 5 grown men pulling me up. Other times I went flying after getting stabbed by a kitchen utensil propelled by a magnetized weapon. It was bananas”.

He further added, “Ajay and I have worked together before on Undekhi. And that kind of gangster violence is shot and performed very differently than Reeta Sanyal’s comic book action sequences. We’ve got cartoon style villains in this show and their weapons are equally as imaginative as their names. It’s very fun once you buy into the world’.

“I have to say I really loved wearing a cop uniform. I’d put it on and something would transform within me. Walking around with a gun holstered gives you a strange sense of authority. Your body language changes. You lead with your belly and your gait becomes more deliberate. I’d keep going up to people and questioning them as if I was an actual inspector. Eventually when the crew got annoyed with me, I had to make them comply at gunpoint, very unprofessional but equally fun”, he signed off.

Rathee plays the character of Jai, a dedicated yet whimsical police officer who shadows Adah's character Reeta Sanyal. Directed by Abhirup Ghosh and produced by Rajeshwar Nair, the show also stars Rahul Dev and Manik Papneja. 

Released earlier this month, the show has garnered an absolute viewership of 2.9 million audience in the week of 21st October to 27th October 2024 as per Ormax’s OTT viewership estimates. Stumping the very popular show, Fabulous Lives Vs Bollywood Wives (Netflix), Reeta Sanyal has secured 4th position in terms of viewership, only after the Legend of Hanuman (Disney+Hotstar), The Great Indian Kapil Show (Netflix) and Kriti Sanon- Kajol starrer film Do Patti (Netflix).