Shubham Saraf and Charlie Hunnam are Shantaram's unlikely pairing, playing Lin and Prabu respectively. Shantaram, which is based on the novel of the same by Gregory David Roberts, is AppleTV+'s latest television show. The series follows Lin, a convict who has fled to India and makes a life for himself in Bombay. There, Lin meets a slew of characters who will change his life forever.
Shantaram is created by Steve Lightfoot and Just Kurzel and will have a 12-episode first season. The show's vast ensemble also includes Antonia Desplat, Fayssal Bazzi, Elham Ehsas, Rachel Kamath, and more.
Before the premiere of Shantaram, Screen Rant caught up with Saraf and Hunnam to talk preparing for the series and how they immediately clicked on set.
Humman & Saraf on Shantaram
Screen Rant: Charlie, I read that you sat down with author Gregory [David Roberts] in preparation for the show. What would you say is the most important or valuable thing you may have learned from him going into the series?
Charlie Hunnam: Oh, that's very interesting. I think that probably the most valuable thing was just having the confidence that we actually had fairly similar souls. He's extraordinarily intelligent so I knew that I wasn't going to be able to sort of match him on an intellect level. But heart and soul felt like there was some kinship there.
I've talked about this a little bit, but in the four days that we spent together, every single person that we met assumed that we were father and son. And we don't really look that similar. I thought it was much more of an essence thing that they were reacting to. So I was very nervous. It's nerve-wracking to play a real person who is still alive and is going to watch your efforts to bring them to life. And I was terrified by the prospect of that, and I left feeling like he loved me and that I understood who he was, so I had the confidence to go bring forth my version of Lin.
Shubham, I love the relationship between your character and Lin. How did you and Charlie build that rapport? It was so spread out over so many years of filming, so how did you guys kind of keep that up, too?
Shubham Saraf: Actually, I jumped on the project very late. So for me, the first time me and Charlie met, was actually the first day of shooting. We really didn't get any time to chat about it [or] prep at all. And that kind of proved to be the greatest gift for us too, because we just sort of didn't know what the hell we were doing. It was kind of a key scene for their relationship where they commune, as Charlie says... Marijuana and whiskey and fine dining in a slum. And we just sort of didn't talk about it, went in, let ourselves kind of not know how it was going to go. And in the process, I remember being like, "Oh, sh-t, this guy gets me." And that's kind of exactly what was happening in the scene as we both [think] this guy gets me. It sort of sealed the deal. And the rest was history, as they say.
I love how it parallels real life. I feel like that makes it all better.
Charlie Hunnam: Yeah, that is the case. So often it's always inexplicable who you're going to like in the world and who you're going to have chemistry [with] and who you're going to say something to, and they're actually going to really hear what you said and not hear what they think that you're saying. The relationship between Lin and Prabu is the beating heart of Shantaram and if we didn't like each other or weren't able to connect, you can't manufacture that.
Shubham Saraf: Yeah, we spent 13 hours a day trapped in a hot little tent together. [If] he couldn't chat, it would have been like watching paint dry.
About Shantaram
Based on the internationally best-selling novel by Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram” follows a fugitive named Lin Ford (Charlie Hunnam) looking to get lost in vibrant and chaotic 1980s Bombay. Alone in an unfamiliar city, Lin struggles to avoid the trouble he’s running from in this new place. After falling for an enigmatic and intriguing woman named Karla, Lin must choose between freedom or love and the complications that come with it.
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New episodes of Shantaram premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.