Madhavan is a delinquent and Surveen lights up the screen: Manu Joseph on casting for Decoupled

Netflix India recently dropped the trailer for Decoupled, starring R Madhavan and Surveen Chawla. In the show, the actors play Arya and Shruti Iyer, a rich couple from Gurgaon, who are wading through the complexities of marriage. Shruti is a CEO while Arya is a pulp fiction writer.

With Decoupled releasing on Netflix this December, creator Manu Joseph spoke about the series, how it came together, and the process of casting its leads.

On working with R Madhavan and Surveen Chawla, Manu said,  “It was a stroke of fortune for us to have been able to cast two stellar actors. Each brought a different gift to set. Madhavan is a very natural Arya, he's a delinquent and the thing about comedy is that the creators and the practitioners need to be delinquents; because comedy is a form of delinquency.

Surveen just lights up the scene, and I don't know how she does it. She's just there and then suddenly the stakes are high. She's a lot of fun. She is the only one in the series who gets the better of Arya and gets back at him for many of the things that he has done. So there is a nice playfulness to her seriousness.”