Ashi Dua: Producer Ashi Dua Calls Her Series BGDC ‘Like A Kiss To Young Girls In
In an exclusive conversation with Zoom, the co-producer on the upcoming Amazon Prime Video series spoke about how the show will capture the authentic experiences of Indian boarding schools.
Producer Ashi Dua Calls Her Series BGDC ‘Like A Kiss To Young Girls In Our Country’ | Exclusive
The first teaser of #BGDC (which stands for Big Girls Don’t Cry) was unveiled by Amazon Prime Video. The series, which has been created by Nithya Mehra and co-produced by Ashi Dua and Karan Kapadia, will revolve around the strong bonds of sisterhood formed between the young women who meet at a fictional boarding school. The cast of #BGDC includes Pooja Bhatt, Zoya Hussain, Lovleen Misra, Mukul Chadda, Raima Sen, Dalai, Tenzin Lhakyila, Avantika Vandanapu, Aneet Padda, Akshita Sood, Afrah Sayed and Vidushi.
Ashi Dua on why #BGDC is real and authentic
Dua, who is known for producing the anthology projects Lust Stories, Ghost Stories, Paava Kadhaigal, Ankahi Kanhaniya and Lust Stories 2, revealed how #BGDC was a collaborative effort between herself, Karan Kapadia, Nitya Mehra and Sudhanshu Saria. In an interview with Zoom, she shared, “We went to boarding schools, all of us. I went to Nainital. Karan went to Lawrence [School], Sudhanshu went to Doon School, [and] Nithya went to Welham. So, as boarding school kids, we wanted to do a show which is about the real, authentic boarding school life in India. Stereotypically, there are a lot of boys’ shows about hostels. But there are not many girls shows, so we wanted to do an girls’ boarding school show.”
She further added, “It’s something we’ve all lived. We’ve all felt some incident or the other has happened with one of us. It’s something very close to us because while we were all in school, there were characters like this, there were people like this, there were stories like this. It’s taken from those elements from our personal lives but of course the show is fictional.”
“This show is almost like a kiss to the young girls in our country,” Dua said. “It’s almost like telling them that fight for yourselves but do what really makes you happy and figure out who you really are before you step into the world. From the brink age of 17 is when you move out into the world after 12th grade and that one-two years is really critical because girls are not sure about themselves, there is a lot of insecurity. I think that is what we are really dealing with in a fun way.”
Fresh, young cast of #BGDC
The upcoming series was shot in Ooty and in production for nearly two-and-a-half-years. Dua explained, “When we did start writing it, some policies changed with OTT platforms and because our show is about under 18 girls, we had to rewrite the script two times and that’s why it took so long.”
But the biggest hurdle for the show was casting the seven young characters that make up the main cast. The producer shared it took close to a year to cast. She said, “We auditioned over 800-900 girls pan-India, and that’s when we found our seven girls. They’re completely fresh, new except one of them has now broken out with Mean Girls in Hollywood, Avantika. At the time we cast her, she hadn’t. There are fresh seven faces that we found and that’s what we really worked on. Of course, there’s an ensemble of Pooja and Raima and Arjun Mathur and a couple of other really good actors. But the show belongs to the seven girls.”
Casting directors Shivam and Anmol found their young actresses from Punjab, Los Angeles and even Nepal. The makers weren’t looking to cast established faces from the industry. For many of the main seven leads in the cast, this is their first big, long format debut.
Ashi Dua on what #BGDC is about
Like most school stories, #BGDC will capture issues big and small that can affect teenagers and unlike other dramas, the Amazon Prime Video series will explore these young girls trying to go through these life experiences together.
Dua elaborated, “When you’re a 17-year-old girl, the things that you go through in life… little bit of patriarchy that you see around you in your families, with your teachers. It’s your first big fight that you have with your friends that breaks your heart. It’s friendship, it’s sisterhood, it’s heartbreak. It’s basically growing up at the age of 17, what it’s like to be a girl in a hostel in India. We’ve not Anglicised anything. My girls are still wearing, which most of the boarding schools are, they are wearing salwar kameez [as uniforms].”
Besides the look of the series, #BGDC also differentiates itself from the rest of the campus stories as it features these teens being independent away from their parents. Dua said, “They are not going home every day. They are living with each other. They are in a hostel where they don’t meet their families, so their friends are their families. It’s true to that and the other thing is that there a lot of shows that were recently made on school life and all and they felt very… I…
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