Nawazuddin Siddiqui recently concluded filming the Africa schedule of the second season of Sacred Games. Ahead of a week’s filming in Mumbai, the actor teased fans that the new season of the hit Netflix series will be the ‘baap’ (daddy) of season one.

“This season will be the baap of the first one. Even if people know Ganesh Gaitonde, they won’t know what to expect from him. We shot extensively across Mombasa, Cape Town and Johannesburg,” Nawaz told Mid-Day.

The actor plays gangster Ganesh Gaitonde in the show, which traces his origins while in a parallel plot, Saif Ali Khan’s inspector Sartaj Singh goes on a race-against-time mission to save Mumbai from an impending attack.

Gaitonde is killed in the first episode of the series, and the rest of the first season tells his story in flashback. Season two will further explore his tale, and his relationship with Pankaj Tripathi’s character, Guruji. Tripathi also shot in Africa for season two.

Vikramaditya Motwane will step down as co-director in the second season to concentrate on his showrunning duties. Masaan’s Neeraj Ghaywan will share the director’s chair with Anurag Kashyap. Speaking about his long relationship with the filmmaker, Nawaz said, “When Anurag is working with me, he is constantly pushing me to break my own boundaries. It comes from familiarity and my ability to go on a roller coaster with him. As an actor, I am someone who enjoys twirling myself up.”

The first season of Sacred Games became a runaway success. Netflix recently revealed that two out of three viewers of the show came from outside India. Recalling the moment he realised when the show had become a hit, Nawaz said, “I realised the impact of the show when I was shooting in Rome, a week after its release. People came up to me to click pictures. My team would show me the memes that were doing the rounds on the Internet.”

Nawaz was recently seen in the controversial biopic, Thackeray, in which he plays Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray.

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First Published: Jan 29, 2019 12:14 IST