Ladies special: The Anushree Experiments
Filmmaker Aparna Malladi and writer Gautami Challagulla come together to create Posh Poris.
Aparna Malladi has always worked on scripts with women as lead characters like her film The Anushree Experiments. Gautami Challagulla, has done her thesis from the University of Hyderabad on the Study of Female bonding in Telugu Cinema. When the two got together, they became a perfect match to come up with a webseries — on women. The series, Posh Poris, released its first episode on October 12, and in four days it has gotten more than 1.5 lakh views on YouTube.
“After my film Anushree Experiments, I got offers to work on webseries. I wanted to work with female writers or directors, so I spread the word and that’s how I met Gautami,” says Malladi, who stays in the US, but is here for work. For Challagulla, an entrepreneur who took a break to try her hand at fiction writing, working with Malladi was just what she was looking for.
“After I watched her film, I was keen on working with Malladi. Besides, most of the team members are women,” says Challagulla.
The story revolves around three working women roommates, their problems and how they deal with life. It also has characters like mothers, the nosy house owner, a annoying auto-driver and sarcastic watchmen. While one wants to marry her boyfriend, the other is trying to go abroad and the third girl is trying to set-up her event management company.
“For long we’ve had female characters who are either heroic like the Vijaya Shanti kinds or those who need rescuing, so our challenge was to normalise the characters, make them real while ensuring there is no emasculation,” says Gautami about the webseries. The episodes of which are 13 to 15 minutes long.
“The focus is on their inter-personal relations. It’s a light-hearted comedy and all the instances are something girls will relate to,” explains Challagulla who adds that the first season has 10 episodes.
While Malladi adds, “The best thing here is that there is no censorship. So, if we need to add any swear word (a youngster’s language while talking to friends), or use any gesture, we can.”