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‘Sultan’ actress Kubbra Sait has shared her experience of doing an audio show which is a Hindi adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s bestselling series ‘The Sandman’.
She spoke to IANS about her role, narration process and pressure of doing a show with such a huge fanbase.
Kubbra Sait says: “I’m elated and I am extremely proud of the fact that I am able to voice an incredible character for one of the greatest shows.
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Kubbra Sait further adds, ‘The Sandman’ takes its listeners into the world of fantasy and horror and these genres are becoming immensely popular now.
“I think that anything that allows you to think beyond what you really know, or what you think you know and being introduced to a world that is completely not familiar to you is both challenging and exciting. I mean the fact that you can do things that you aren’t in real life like I am not ‘Death’ really is pretty cool.”
Adapted and directed by multi award-winner Dirk Maggs, and performed by Vijay Varma (Morpheus) and Tabu (The Narrator), this first part of the audio series, also features Manoj Bajpayee (Doctor Destiny), Sushant Divgikar (Desire), Adarsh Gaurav (John Constantine), Neeraj Kabi (Lucifer), Kubbra Sait (Death) and Tillotama Shome (Calliope), and others.
On her working experience with the entire cast who has voiced this series with her, Kubbra Sait adds: “When I got to know that I was a part of such a hugely prolific cast, I was just taken aback for a second. It was like my own little moment to say that, ‘Hey whatever you have been doing so far has been good and this just feels like a good pay day’.”
‘The Sandman’ already has a huge fan base and various Hollywood celebrities have also been associated with it. Was there any pressure in narrating it in Hindi and she replies: “As I said earlier that we weren’t really sure of such a huge project, I wasn’t really sure because it was such a tight-lipped project. I didn’t know who my actors were and what I was really doing in that sense, except for the fact that I was playing ‘Death’. But when it all came together, I felt like ‘I’m such a cool piece of such an enormous puzzle.’ That felt amazing like as I said it was a great pay day.”
While elaborating about her role and experience of narrating it, Kubbra Sait shares: “So, what I really loved about ‘Death’ is the fact that she is really unapologetic. She is really tongue-in-cheek and somebody who is really a matter of fact. And as I had the opportunity to say this before, at least the way we are raised as a culture, we don’t speak about death. You know, we always try to push it away. We don’t speak about mishaps, we don’t speak about bad things happening to good people. But Death is like the most conventional next step if you are living. In that sense, it was a really proud moment for me to play that.”
Was narrating for this role difficult and did you require any special training for it? And the actress asserts that she did not require any special training.
“It was a beautiful process to get into the zone, rather than relying on so many other stimuli that you get on set. For me it was a really fun process of spending some time with myself, with that script in that room, having the necessary cues required. Also, because we were dubbing it over an existing voice, so it had to sound identical and similar. So in that sense, I was drawing a lot of inspiration from the actor who had previously voiced Death, who was played by Kat Dennings.”
Kat Dennings plays the role of Death. Did she get any tips from her for narration and she answers: “I obviously heard Kat’s voice when I was recording my own voice. And well, well I love Kat Dennings. I mean come on, have you watched You? She is incredible. So to fill her really large shoes was like a really huge moment for me. I was like “really, wow that’s what happening? That’s great.”
‘The Sandman’ is available on Audible India.
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