Vivian Richards may star in 'Masaba Masaba' S3: Director Sonam Nair

Like its previous season, the second chapter of Masaba Masaba also ends on a cliffhanger, this time hinting at the possibility of seeing Masaba Gupta’s father and legendary cricketer Vivian Richards in the potential third installment of the popular Netflix series.

Sonam Nair, director of the semi-fictional show based on the lives of veteran actor Neena Gupta and her designer-actor daughter Masaba Gupta, said if the latest installment does well, the team would love to expand the story. Netflix has yet to comment on the prospective third season.

Season-dependent

“It depends on how this season does. We hope it does well. If Netflix feels ‘Let’s give them another season’, we’ll start working on it honestly. Unless you hear back from the audience, there’s no point in keeping things ready…The hope is there (of Vivian Richard’s appearance), that’s why we have the cliffhanger,” Nair told PTI in an interview over Zoom.

The director said the team used the feedback on Masaba Masaba season one, which premiered in 2020, to finetune the second part. “I was sitting and reading every message, tweet, trying to understand what is working, and what do people want more of,” she said about the first season.

According to Nair, the new chapters aim was to go “a little deeper” into the emotions, thoughts, and life contemplations of the characters. “Masaba and Neena ji are playing themselves but they are also representing a lot of women. Through them, I wanted to talk about things that women feel but they arent talked about enough or represented on screen. There is a lot of fun in the show, but the intention was to go deeper and say some things that have some kind of importance or relevance,” she added.

Multiple themes

The second season, which arrived on the streamer last Friday, tackles several themes such as pregnancy scare, sexism, work insecurities, and mental health.

The director, whose credits include the 2013 film Gippi and web series The Trip and Kaafir, said addressing issues with entertainment is always a balancing act. “Anything that is too sweet, spicy or salty is not palatable. So, it (the show) has to be finely balanced. The most effort from my side goes into keeping the tone correct. You can have the same scene in so many different ways.

“To have this tone — where you laugh, cry, feel something, and then you laugh again — is kind of difficult to write. A lot of it also happens on edit. Edit is also about achieving the balance that Wait is there too much message? or Have we taken this a bit too lightly?” Nair further said.

Also starring Neil Bhoopalam and Rytasha Rathore, Masaba Masaba is showrun and produced by Ashvini Yardi of Viniyard Films. Kusha Kapila, Kareema Barry, Barkha Singh, and Armaan Khera play key roles in the second season.

With agency inputs