Interview | Neeraj Ghaywan Defends Janhvi Kapoor's Casting; Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa On Challenges In Homebound
Director Neeraj Ghaywan, actors Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa on Homebound – a powerful story of friendship against all odds and India’s official entry to Oscars.
By Seema Sinha
Published : September 24, 2025 at 12:02 PM IST
Among many ideas to approach the role, director Neeraj Ghaywan told his Homebound actors that the character isn’t going to come to them, they have to go to it. “You have to step out of your privileged life, confront that reality, and let it settle within you,” was his simple advice he says. Starring Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor Homebound is India's official entry for the 2026 Oscars. Though yet to be released in India, Homebound has already made a mark internationally. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it received a standing ovation. It later travelled to the 50th Toronto International Film Festival, finishing as the second runner-up in the prestigious International People’s Choice Award category.
The film talks about two childhood friends from a small North Indian village – one a Muslim (Mohammad Shoaib played by Khatter) and another a Dalit (Chandan portrayed by Jethwa) – who chase a police job that promises them the dignity they’ve long been denied. But as they inch closer to their dream, mounting desperation threatens the bond that holds them together. “The first thing Neeraj bhai told both of us was that he needed us to be vulnerable with each other; it wasn’t enough that we have a healthy relationship as colleagues and only share our success stories or our happiness with each other. He was pushing us to be open with each other and even have secrets that are our own, ones that we wouldn’t share even with him,” said Khatter on building camaraderie with his co-star Jethwa who plays his best friend.
Addressing the conversations around casting and especially around casting Janhvi Kapoor in a Dalit role that sparked the debate, Ghaywan said, “All the three lead actors are good looking and people might wonder that they don’t look like villagers. In fact, many feel how come a Dalit has fair skin, then why are we presenting Janhvi as a Dalit character but then I say that in India, we have people from all walks of life. So, that wasn’t my concern. Besides acting skills, I was searching for the inner hunger to portray a character with shiddat, intensity and truth,” said the director, known for his socially conscious cinema.
Ghaywan further stated that he chose actors with talent and hunger to represent marginalized communities. “Casting the right actor wasn’t just about screen presence or line delivery, it was about emotional depth and sincerity, especially when telling the stories of historically marginalised communities. We were representing the entire samaj, there are thousands of Chandans, Shoaibs, Sudhas and Vaishalis in our country and to tell their story is a big responsibility,” said Ghaywan. And to help the actors step into their roles with integrity, Neeraj gave them Dr BR Ambedkar’s seminal text, Annihilation of Caste, to read. He explained that this was the first step in their preparation. He also took the actors to rural villages, allowing them to experience the socio-cultural context of their characters as closely as possible.
“As part of the prep, we went to Barabanki (in Uttar Pradesh) together. We were accompanied by Neeraj bhai and Shreedhar Dubey, who has acted in the film and also written the dialogues. We did dialect coaching, worked on text, on language. That trip helped us meet the local people... they would allow us into their houses and we would eat with them, sit and read our scenes with them... that whole experience gave us an authentic feel of the space of the film. We tried to understand their lives, what makes them happy and what their difficulties are. It was a strange spiritual experience. I have never worked with a director who is so deeply caring and thoughtful as Neeraj Ghaywan. Even if I was not part of this film I would have still requested people to watch this film,” says Khatter.
When asked what was the most challenging part of playing this character, Khatter said, “For me the journey has been truly transformative. I have been a fan of Neeraj bhai since Masaan that I watched 10 years ago. Since then, my wish was to get an opportunity to work with him. I wouldn’t have imagined that I would be part of his second feature film. When I read the script, I realised this film is much bigger than me as an artist or any of the artists. It is an important film for the whole world; it is very accessible and it is not made for one particular or set of audience. The director has given it a lot of thought so that it can reach people all over the world. At TIFF, it was shown to 1800 people at Roy Thomson Hall, it's an orchestra theatre and it is a bit scary to go there, it has three balconies and the kind of reception the film got over there, it felt like we had come to Gaiety-Galaxy theatre of Mumbai. They were screaming, shouting, and clapping. Then we also got a heartwarming response from the legends here like Naseeruddin Shah, Javed Akhtar, Aparna Sen and Konkana Sen Sharma."
Jethwa, who has the knack of choosing emotionally intense and layered roles, Homebound is no exception. “Filmmakers feel it is safe to give me these kinds of roles since I have done quite a few, but I am a very greedy actor. I would never like to leave any genre or character and such has been my life experiences that when I take up any role, I use those experiences and I did the same for Homebound,” said Jethwa. Jethwa also shared a valuable piece of advice he received from producer Aditya Chopra. He said, “For this character, I used one Guru Mantra which Aditya (Chopra) told me, to surrender myself to my director. This is what I did here in Homebound, too. Neeraj sir has researched a lot about the film. He is one of the few directors who has so much depth and knowledge and that is why people believe in his films. We have received this kind of response in TIFF, Cannes because he always presents universally accepted facts. With this film, he created a journey for us, and whatever he said, we followed throughout. Whatever was possible from my end, I did, physically I lost about 10 kilo weight and Ishaan did the same.” While interrupting Jethwa, Ghaywan says with a laugh, “I wanted them to lose the gym body, that muscle, so that it looked like they were from a village. It shouldn’t look like they have beefed up.”
The film finds its roots in a poignant real-life story first told in a New York Times op-ed during India’s COVID-19 lockdown by journalist Basharat Peer, in his 2020 essay -- Taking Amrit Home (now retitled A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway). The essay recounts the journey of two young migrant workers, Mohammad Saiyub and Amrit Kumar, friends from Devari village in Uttar Pradesh. One Muslim, the other Dalit, the pair had migrated to Surat in Gujarat, working in different factories and sharing a rented room. When India entered a strict lockdown in March 2020, factories shut down, and their savings began to dwindle. With public transport suspended and no access to train tickets, they eventually boarded a crowded truck headed for home. During the journey, Amrit fell seriously ill.
How did the article transport into this film? “The New York Times article is actually the film’s climax,” reveals Ghaywan. “What happens when these boys take that journey from Surat and that is why it is called Homebound. It is a bit dramatized from what the actual story was as the actual final event did not happen on the road, it happened in a hospital. I took this liberty just to enhance the drama. That entire section in the article was not tampered much. But the challenge for me was ...we had the climax and now we had to build the entire story around it. I met the surviving families, we went to real people and so much had happened in their lives. It was simply heart-breaking. It is lovely to see in the film that Shoaib fulfils his friend’s promise, his dream that he should get education but in real life that person is a construction worker in Dubai. It is my wishful thinking that the only escape from hardships for the marginalised community is education,” said the director.
Ghaywan says when he writes or directs, he tries to make the story his own. “Otherwise, I cannot have a feel for it. Secondly and most importantly, he says, he has fully fleshed out the characters while going deep down in his own growing years. “I have drawn experiences from my childhood and teenage years and tried to understand what I went through. The last part of life I have been passing and masquerading as an upper caste member and gradually came into my own quite similar to how Chandan's (Jethwa) character arc is,” he said.
Homebound tackles many issues – discrimination due to religion, casteism, patriarchy, and finally the fears and struggle of migrant workers during covid induced lockdown period, and Ghaywan says, “Idea has not been to snuff the film with too many issues; all this came organically. I grew up in a patriarchal household and I have seen how I was favoured more than my sisters and that shame I carried for a long time, I wanted to put it in a film. As a kid I was often told that I was very cute and that is why I was being favoured but I realised I was being favoured because I was a male child. My sister saw the film and she said she didn’t realise it then. So, having so many issues in the film is not by design but organically. You can’t present characters in a unidimensional way. Each of the characters – Shoiab or Chandan they are not morals -- they can’t just be hardworking; they need to have some innate flaws in them.”
Talking about the takeaway and learning from the film, Khatter said the biggest change has been in social awareness because, “It is not enough to just have good intentions. I believe that if you are part of this society and if you are privileged enough to be able to make people aware in some way, then it is your responsibility to stay socially aware, and I have learned this from Neeraj bhai. He could use his platform purely for entertainment, but he doesn’t. If he is saying something in his film, then you can be sure that he has contributed in real life as well, and I believe that is a beautiful thing. The director of my first film (Beyond The Clouds director Majid Majidi) told me that if you want to become a good actor, first become a good human being; everything else will follow. You do not have to be an Anglomaniac to be able to do this job. Now I try to be as socially aware as I can," said the actor.
One of the many reasons Homebound is gaining international attention is the presence of legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese who is an executive producer on the film that is produced by Karan Johar, Adar Poonawalla, Apoorva Mehta, and Somen Mishra. The co-producers are Marijke de Souza and Melita Toscan Du Plantier. “Yes, of course, Mr Scorsese’s presence is definitely going to help, we are quite privileged to have his support. He has been so instrumental in giving us a copious number of notes, his contribution to the script has been quite a lot. He has even given feedback on the edit. That is the reason why he is the biggest filmmaker around the world,” said Ghaywan, who is more excited about the film reaching the Indian audience as he says, “Of course, we feel very thrilled and humbled, the story is about our heartland, our people, deeply humane, it is a call for inculcating empathy and humanity in people and not see differences between each other so that is the message that we are going with and that is going on a global stage for us. We are super thrilled about going to Cannes, Toronto, Melbourne …but personally for me it is the film reaching all over India. That is the biggest thing and that cannot be matched with anything else. We are so eager to see how everyone in India is going to see and react on the 26th of September. We have made this film for our country with absolute authenticity and integrity and I hope people here appreciate it,” said Ghaywan signing off.
Read More
- Homebound at Oscars 2026: Neeraj Ghaywan Calls Out Caste, Religion and Patriarchy in His Most Personal Film Yet
- Homebound Triumphs At TIFF: Vishal Jethwa's Inspiring Journey From Humble Beginnings To Global Spotlight
- From Masaan To Sacred Games: 6 Neeraj Ghaywan-Directed Movies, Series & Shorts To Watch Before Homebound
