Come Friday, and Netflix will bring forth a fresh tale on relationships and marriages with Decoupled. It stars R Madhavan and Surveen Chawla as a married couple on the verge of a breakup. Ever since the trailer dropped, fans have been intrigued by the premise of the show.
In an exclusive chat with indianexpress.com, Madhavan shared that he was initially sceptical about the response to the show given it was entirely in English. “I had some people asking why are you not catering to the Hindi, Tamil or other Indian languages. However, the show is about a pulp fiction writer, who thinks and speaks in English. It would have been unfair to land these jokes in any other language. But once the trailer dropped, much to my amazement, the media and public have reacted to it with great relatability. And that really makes encouraged me.”
The show revolves around a new-age couple dealing with contemporary issues in relationships. Given the 3 Idiots actor has been married for a good 22 years, we asked him about the changes that he has seen in terms of marriage and relationships.
“I think people are quitting so easily. Priority ki vaat lag gaya hai (nobody cares about priorities). Also, there are so many distractions and pressures, especially put by the corporates and trends. That makes you feel inadequate. It’s undue pressure. I think it’s important to recognise what is important. In the end, it all cuts down to a simple life, with a companion. I think if we look at the relationship shared by most of our parents, we will know it’s not so complicated.”
Echoing his thoughts, Surveen Chawla agreed that we may desire to have a simple life but end up complicating it ourselves. Stating that with so much stress already in life, she wonders how people get time to create issues in relationships. The actor also said that being a part of Decoupled has also changed her outlook towards relationships.
“I have been complaining about a few things to my husband regularly. The show has played a huge part in changing a wee bit of my outlook. When I went back, I realised the magic of acceptance. I have beautifully accepted things and now let them take their own course. You don’t need to decide everything, you can let things roll out themselves. And I find that beautiful. Also, coming to changes in marriages now, I think exit has become so easy. It’s so unfair that way since you have an option all the time. I don’t understand how one can be so non-committal about everything,” she said.
While Surveen got to learn a lot about relationships through her character Shruti, Madhavan is irritated by his character Arya. Sharing that he found a lot of Arya in him, the character has given a lot of new thoughts and traits to him. Talking further about his part, the Rang De Basanti actor said, “Arya is a keen observer and Manu (creator Manu Joseph) has kind of designed the part as who he is really as a writer. I had a lot of conversations with him, and that’s when I realised that I may have been interpreting the lines differently. Once we got there, it was charming and challenging. He is absurd, an idiot with no social decency or filter. Whatever comes to his mind, he says it. However, it comes with so much innocence and without any spite. That is what I hung on — Arya is a man without any judgment. You will never hate him for sure.”
Created by Manu Joseph and directed by Hardik Mehta, comedy-drama Decoupled will start streaming on Netflix from December 17.
