New Delhi: The lead cast of Paatal Lok Season 2 on Amazon Prime Video—Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Tillotama Shome and Gul Panag—was handpicked by the director and writer. But it wasn’t just them who made the show click. It was also the 40-odd supporting actors who made their ‘two-minute’ roles count, helping Ahlawat’s Hathi Ram Choudhary shine. Most were brought on board by casting director Nikita Grover, who scouted on the streets of Nagaland and approached strangers in cafes to sign them up.
“After Paatal Lok Season 2, I shared on social media that what she (Grover) has done is created a roster of 30–40 actors from the Northeast that we had no idea about,” said casting director Tess Joseph, who is widely credited for bringing diversity into Indian casting, and worked on Monkey Man (2024) and The White Tiger (2021).
Grover is now being praised across B-Town and beyond, but realises that the industry has a long way to go when it comes to giving casting directors their due. Dedicated awards for them are a recent phenomenon.
“People don’t understand how important the casting department is. We are one of the first departments who start working and we work till the end. If some actor cannot give dates, we have to figure it out, beginning to end of the show,” said 32-year-old Grover, who is also an actress, last seen as Constable Manju Varma in both seasons of Paatal Lok.
The work often begins long before auditions. For Paatal Lok, she spent six months away from home, travelling and researching. One of her wins was convincing a cobbler in Nagaland to audition. Her casting of trans characters in Kohrra and Paatal Lok was also backed by fieldwork.
“The character of the transgender in the first season of Kohrra was really fun casting. She had a small role. But in doing that, I learnt a lot about the community in Punjab, how they have a separate mohalla altogether,” said Grover. “In contrast, when casting Cheeni (in Paatal Lok Season 1), I saw how transgenders were more welcome in Manipuri society, and they would often run very successful salons.”
Grover is firm that true creative casting can’t happen without risk-taking but the onus doesn’t just lie with casting directors.
“It has to start with directors, producers, and filmmakers. We can bring in ideas. But are the makers ready to take that risk? Most people want to play safe.”
Casting directors are still seen as tertiary to pre-production and judged by the number of ‘big’ names they bring. Grover wants to see things change.
“Casting directors need to be treated as casting directors and not assistants to directors,” she said.
Grover credits Sudip Sharma and Dibakar Banerjee for being open to creative ideas. She worked with Banerjee on his segment in Ghost Stories (2020), and with Sharma on Paatal Lok.
Still, she had to fight for some picks.
“Sudip rejected LC Sekhose’s first audition for the role of Reuben Thom. I did the audition again and sent the tape. He still was not convinced. Then I urged him to meet Sekhose, and he eventually understood why I had been rooting for him,” she said.
While acting offers are scarce, Grover—who has also appeared in a few Punjabi films—doesn’t want to give up on acting altogether. Someone just needs to cast her.
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An eye for the look
Uncle Ken’s character in Paatal Lok created much curiosity among viewers. Many didn’t realise they were watching Jahnu Barua, one of Assamese cinema’s most respected filmmakers. For Grover, finding the right fit for Uncle Ken was the most challenging. The makers of the show finally cast award-winning director Barua.
“It was easy to get people for the younger parts in Nagaland. But finding people who fit the older characters was really difficult. And the hardest to cast was for the role of Uncle Ken. I even auditioned Merenla Imsong’s father for the role,” said Grover with a laugh.
Imsong, who played Rose Lizo in the series, was among many relatively unknown actors Grover discovered during her extensive casting process. Overall, she auditioned over 200 people for Paatal Lok Season 2, from professional actors and hopeful to people she literally picked off the streets.
It was often the first-timers who made things easier.
“It’s sometimes hard for some senior actors to take instructions from a younger casting director, and it was not the case in Nagaland,” she said.
English professor Theyie Keditsu, who plays Grace Reddy, wife of hotelier Mr Reddy (Nagesh Kukunoor), was spotted by Grover at a restaurant. The young Guddu, who loses his mother in an accident, was cast after Grover got in touch with an NGO working with underprivileged children in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area.
In the process, she’s set a new benchmark for finding talent on the ground and nurturing them into characters that linger long after a binge-watch.
“When the first season of Kohrra came out, I saw Nikita’s name for the first time and I wrote to her because I thought it was so authentically cast and celebrated the region and its talents. That’s the mark of great casting, when we honour a community, accents, and the people. She clearly has the eye,” said Joseph.
Unconventional methods, Insta to Imphal
Spotting talent in a region where language and culture act as barriers can become tricky. Grover had to get creative. She used a local singer’s social media to spread the word and tapped photographers for casting leads.
Alobo Naga, a popular musician in Nagaland, posted the audition call on his Facebook and Instagram, which have a significant following. The response was strong and Grover even held auditions in his studio in Dimapur. Alobo landed a role himself, playing one of the two cops secretly working for the fiery leader Reuben Thom.
“I followed every major photographer of the state, met with them, and even showed the reference pictures of the kind of faces I was looking for. I figured since they photograph a lot of people as part of their job, they would have recommendations,” said Grover.
Understanding the place and people mattered just as much as spotting the right face. Grover tracked local trends, learning how things moved. When she noticed how popular thrifting was in Nagaland, she reached out to online thrift stores to share the audition call. She also enlisted the help of Anungla Zoe Longkumer, one of the show’s researchers, who also happens to be the granddaughter of celebrated Naga writer Temsula Ao.
While people took time to open up, Grover made herself comfortable in Dimapur, Kohima, and smaller towns, slowly gaining trust, striking up conversations with strangers, and asking, “Do you want to act?”
“Even during downtime, when we were all eating, she’d be scanning the restaurant. If someone caught her eye, she’d get their number, go visit them, try to convince them to do a part, and make their family feel comfortable,” recalled Tillotama Shome, who plays SP Meghna Barua in Paatal Lok 2.
Not every effort paid off. Grover once convinced a cobbler in Nagaland who’d fixed her bag to audition, but it didn’t work out because his family wasn’t on board.
“But in true Nikita style, she knocked on the next door. And then the next,” added Shome.
Even after locking the cast, Paatal Lok kept Grover on her toes. Many actors were inexperienced or non-professionals and didn’t always stick to the all-important shoot schedule. Shome said Grover handled it by always having “backups” on call and by staying patient with those new to the game.
“I heard from actors she auditioned how gentle she was with them, how she didn’t give up when they were just having a bad day. I’m not surprised. She may have full gangsta boss energy, but she’s a really kind person. And it’s not easy to be kind when you’re under pressure,” said Shome.
Climbing the casting ladder
Grover’s days while casting for Paatal Lok would start as early as 8 am, lining up people to shortlist. This, after gruelling auditions for 16 hours the previous day. She hates taking the obvious route and skips ‘cliche casting’.
“The same pool of 10 actors keep popping up in similar roles. And if they belong to a specific region or community, they are more likely to be cast,” said Grover.
Being a casting director in Bollywood means having a lot of patience. There are days on end when almost no progress is made even as money is being spent, especially in projects outside Mumbai.
“Sometimes, nothing really happens for a whole month, and no one is locked. I used to panic in the beginning. But now I understand it’s part of the process,” she said.
Grover started her casting career assisting Abhishek Banerjee, a well-known actor and casting director, on projects like Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (2021) and the first season of Paatal Lok. For the latter, she travelled to Imphal to scout for Cheeni, a role that went to Mairembam Ronaldo Singh.
Her work got her noticed by showrunner Sudip Sharma who offered her the job of primary casting director for not just Paatal Lok 2 but the upcoming second season of Kohrra.
In an earlier conversation with ThePrint, Banerjee said that while casting directors get the credit, it’s associates who do a lot of the groundwork
“Nikita has been one of my brightest associates,” said Banerjee, who co-founded his company Casting Bay with Anmol Ahuja in 2016 to bring professionalism to casting for films and web series. Their credits include Panchayat (2020) and Netflix’s Bulbbul (2020), starring Triptii Dimri.
“When we started Casting Bay, the idea was not only to give a platform to actors but also budding casting directors. I had a great rapport with her and she understood the one simple fact about casting which I tried to put in practice — good casting can’t be done sitting in office spaces. You have to get out of Bombay and reach places where the story is set,” Banerjee added. “And sometimes, you have to take the onus to break casting cliches, which can includes arguing with directors.”
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Delhi to Mumbai
When Grover first left Delhi for Mumbai, it was with dreams of becoming an actor. Back home in the capital, she’d dabbled in theatre, assisted on a comedy show for Fever FM hosted by Khurafati Nitin, and briefly studied English literature at the prestigious St Stephen’s, before dropping out.
“I never really liked it in college, and I was more interested in dramatics,” said Grover, who grew up in a middle-class family in Delhi’s Model Town.
But her acting ambitions seemed star-crossed. After failing to clear the National School of Drama entrance exam, she decided to try her luck in Mumbai—but then ended up making the wrong pitch to the first casting director she called.
“I made the first call to a renowned casting director. But I could not just bring myself to say that I am an actor looking for work. So, instead, I asked, can I assist you? He said yes,” said Grover.
And so, on her third day in Mumbai, a new path starting taking shape.
But things didn’t go as expected. She wasn’t paid, and the experience left her questioning whether she should even stay in the city. She returned home and spent the next three months figuring out what to do next. Eventually, she decided to give casting another chance, this time with Abhishek Banerjee and Anmol Ahuja at Casting Bay. She started out working on ads before moving on to web series.
By this time, she’d made her peace with putting acting on the backburner.
“I had given an audition and when I saw the tape, I realised there is a lot of work that needed to be done,” she said. So, she stayed behind the camera, giving cues to other hopefuls as they auditioned for their dream roles.
Then came a twist. Her dexterity and creative cues caught Sudip Sharma’s attention.
“Sudip sir said you give good cues, you do the role of Manju,” said Grover, laughing. “He spoils you because he does such good work that he raises the bar for you. When you read some scripts, you are like, I want to do this, and his scripts are always like that.”
The role she landed was Constable Manju Varma, a chatty police officer who brings comic relief and warmth to Paatal Lok’s bleak world.
In one scene, while investigating a fruit seller who uses his business as a front for smuggling, Manju calls her boss Hathiram Chaudhary to ask if he wants tinde she found for cheap. She’s also seen talking to her mother about which laddoos are best in her trimester, or looking out for young Guddu, bewildered and scared after his mother’s death.
Behind the scenes, meanwhile, she was challenging standard casting assumptions to give the show its authentic texture. One such choice was casting former Indian Idol winner Prashant Tamang to play Daniel, a dangerous sniper.
“I wanted to show that it doesn’t need bulging muscles to be a sniper,” she said.
More surprises are in store in the upcoming season of Kohrra. The teaser already reveals one, with actor and television host Rannvijay Singha depicted sporting a turban. This was Grover’s casting call.
“He has not played a sardar before, even though we have seen him in a lot of roles. I thought he would do really well in that character,” she said.
For now, she’s waiting for the show to come out, trying not to take herself too seriously even as the compliments for Paatal Lok keep pouring in.
“I want to act more, and also have great projects to cast for. That’s all,” she said.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Tina Das is just obsessed with Nagaland and north-east India.