The story behind Arifin Shuvoo’s ‘Jazz City’ journey
For “Jazz City”, it was acclaimed Bollywood casting director Mukesh Chhabra who first reached out to Arifin Shuvoo. From that moment began a journey of nearly three years, culminating in Shuvoo’s Bollywood debut in a leading role, set to premiere on March 19. To mark the occasion, an official promotional event was held yesterday at a five-star hotel in Kolkata.
At the event, Shuvoo took to the stage alongside director Soumik Sen and others. Recounting how he became involved with “Jazz City”, Shuvoo said, “It wasn’t Soumik da who contacted me first for this project; it was casting director Mukesh Chhabra. I was in Nepal at the time. He told me I needed to audition for a web series. I agreed straight away. Afterwards, Soumik da auditioned me in various ways — sometimes even by sending only audio clips.”
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Shuvoo further explained, “For two years, the script kept being sent to me. I was called to Mumbai and went, yet nothing was confirmed. During those two years, they auditioned many others for the same role. After having someone else perform a particular scene, they might send that very scene to me as well. I would tape it and send it back. Perhaps they liked it; perhaps they didn’t. It was through this process of trial and error that I was eventually selected.”
In addition to directing “Jazz City”, Soumik Sen has written its story and screenplay. Following “Gulaab Gang” and “Mahalaya”, he had not directed another film. He is also the screenwriter of the acclaimed series “Jubilee”, which took him seven years to complete.
The political thriller “Jazz City” will be released on SonyLIV. Bangladeshi actor Arifin Shuvoo plays the central character, Jimmy Roy. Opposite him stars Sauraseni Maitra. The series also features Santanu Ghatak, Aniruddha Gupta, Sayandeep Sengupta, Shreya Bhattacharya, Shataf Figar, Alexandra Taylor and Amit Saha, among many others from both Bollywood and Tollywood.
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