How Netflix's 'Mowgli' taps into the acting chops of its Bollywood cast

'Mowgli' has Abhishek Bachchan voicing Bagheera the black panther, Anil Kapoor as the stern mentor and bear Baloo, Kareena Kapoor Khan as Kaa the hypnotic python, Madhuri Dixit Nene as Nisha the motherly wolf, and Jackie Shroff as the menacing Shere Khan.

Mumbai 25/11/2018: (L-R) Jonathan Cavendish, Christian Bale, Madhuri Dixit-Nene, Abhishek Bachchan, Louis Serkis, Rohan Chand, Anil Kapoor, Freida Pinto, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Andy Serkis during the release of hindi version of Netflix movie 'Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle' at JW Marriott on Sunday. Photo:Prashant Waydande.

In 2004, Shah Rukh Khan kicked off a trend in Bollywood — with Hum Hain Lajawaab, the Hindi dub of The Incredibles – where stars grabbed the mic to lend their voices to beloved animated characters. More recently, Akshay Kumar voiced Optimus Prime for the Hindi dub of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) and then Ranveer Singh took on dubbing for Deadpool2 (2018).

Several of Bollywood’s A-listers appear on the credit roll of Netflix’s more brooding take on Rudyard Kipling’s tales of the man cub. Directed by Andy Serkis, the Hindi dub of Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle – which already boasts of a power-packed Hollywood star cast – has Abhishek Bachchan voicing Bagheera the black panther, Anil Kapoor as the stern mentor and bear Baloo, Kareena Kapoor Khan as Kaa the hypnotic python, Madhuri Dixit Nene as Nisha the motherly wolf, and Jackie Shroff as the menacing Shere Khan.

Taking the mic

This isn’t the first time Kapoor Khan has voiced a CGI character. In fact, it has been ten years since the release of

Roadside Romeo – a Disney and Yash Raj Films venture. “But this is something different, because this is a timeless classic,” she says, “We’ve all grown up watching it and playing one of Saif’s and my favourite characters is an absolute honour.”

And with

Mahabharat (2013), even Kapoor has tried his hand at voicing an animated character but he prefers talking about a film that proved to be a much larger success. “Strangely, I have done [voice acting] for

Mr. India (1987),” he says reminiscing about playing a protagonist who stays invisible for most of the film. The actor goes on to explain how the craft offers him a unique opportunity. “I get a character which I would never get otherwise. I would never get to play Baloo in a non-animated film!” he says, glad about adding the character to his resume.

For Bachchan, the thrill came from the sheer challenge Mowgli posed. “To bring in those elements of an animal from the breath to the grains in the voice – it was completely different. It was very interesting – to be creating the character in [my] voice first,” he says. Kapoor Khan adds, “People are used to seeing me in films and characters which are more like the girl next door, or probably the loving wife. But I’ve never really [done this]. This was actually like performing behind the mic, rather than just lending my voice.” Dixit Nene, on the other hand, shares she was excited to inhabit the film’s universe. “Because I’ve watched so many of these films with my kids and as I was growing up – it was like living your dream, getting to do something like that.”

Indian connections

The film offered the young and articulate Rohan Chand who plays the titular character a distinct experience as well. “I did grow up reading Rudyard Kipling’s short stories, so I really loved them! Mowgli was almost my hero – I really admired him,” says Chand cheerfully. Though he has not dubbed for the Hindi version (Mowgli’s character is voiced by Aaren Panicker in the Hindi version), Chand performs as a solitary human on screen for a large part of the film, surrounded by CGI animals created through performance capture. “After I shot with Christian [Bale], Cate [Blanchett] and everyone back in 2014, I came back six months later to shoot principal photography. We had different motion capture actors, and I had to remember how [the other actors] played it, [while] keeping my performance organic,” says Chand, before adding, “Sometimes we would have two people connected by a tube and they would play [the animals’] front and back halves. And I would have to look at their chest rather than their eyes – I know it doesn’t sound like a hard thing, but it was pretty challenging since it’s very natural to look at someone’s eyes instead!”

Something that was brought up in the chats with the Indian stars was the sense that Mowgli’s story was coming home. For instance, Freida Pinto who plays Messua, the woman who adopts Mowgli in the village, turns wide-eyed in the middle of our interview when she realises she is the first Indian to play a character in the many retellings of The Jungle Book . “I’m loving this moment!” she laughs.

Surprisingly, Mowgli’s story of discovering himself between two distinct world ties up neatly with Pinto’s career as an Indian woman creating space for herself in Hollywood. “The only thing that’s really going to stick is when you embrace who you truly are – and I think of someone like Penelope Cruz. She embraces who she is,” Pinto says about finding her niche in the industry. And about Mowgli , she says, “For me this story is one of belonging and identity, and this film is really going back to its roots.” Bachchan has a similar take when he says, “They’ve kind of presented it as ‘This is your film, so come take ownership of it’. And I think that’s a nice attitude to have.”

We’ll just have to see if the Hindi version will fare better than the English original with such a stellar Bollywood cast.