An interesting take on virginity

After the success of Virgin Woman Diaries, Kabir Sadanand is back with the second season of the series. Starring Archita Agarwal, Dhiraj Totlani, Delnaz Irani and Amit Behl, it’s streaming on Lehren App and SonyLiv. 

Kabir says that the success of the first season prompted them to work on the second season. “We started off a year and a half ago with the dream of starting our own channel. I put on hold two films for it and everybody said, ‘Are you mad? There are such big names and you want to do it individually?’ We announced Married Woman Diaries (his first web series). That was the only way I could show my confidence — by putting my money in something I believed in. After the success of Married Woman Diaries, we announced Virgin Woman Diaries season one, and launched our own channel and it paid off,” says Kabir who has also directed films like Fugly and Tum Milo Toh Sahi. 

The director says that the first season of Virgin Woman Diaries got 48 millions views and the second one is a hit too. “There are many other platforms who want to put up our series now. The world is changing and so is entertainment. It’s all about your phone getting personalised. Those who are not going to adapt, will be left behind,” Kabir says on his visit to Sakal Times along with Archita, Dhiraj, Deepakk Sunil Prasadh (Cinematographer) and Rajinder Singh Puller.

Virgin Woman Diaries is about a teenage girl who is waiting for her 18th birthday to lose her virginity. The team says that the content is much meatier in season 2. “If season one was about choices, the second one is about trust,” says Kabir. 

Archita says that the series has worked because of its concept. “It’s rarely been done before where a woman has spoken about virginity. It’s from a female perspective. Someone asked us, ‘Do women really want to talk about virginity?’. The fact is that it’s never been talked about and yes we want to talk about it. Men talk about it in the open but for women, it’s a taboo,” she says. 

She adds that it’s only in the second season that she has understood her character Kiara. “You will see the difference in both the seasons. Now I feel more confident to play Kiara, who is sometimes confused but wants to control everything. I feel like I know her now. The character has evolved and all the characters have been written very well,” she says. 

Kabir says that the team is trying to give the series the respect it deserves. “Because I am a film guy, we have tried to give it the same kind of treatment. We have shot songs for the online platform, tied up with radio channels, gone outdoor, gone for branding etc,” he points out.

Virgin Woman Diaries claims to be the first web series shot in both wide screen and vertical formats for mobile apps. “The reason,” says Deepakk, “is because the world is going digital and maximum access is on the phone.”

To this Kabir adds, “We decided to also go vertical so that you don’t need to tilt your phone. The experience is similar. It’s a lot of trial and error. The bigger reason was that we needed to give our viewers something new. Secondly, I see my kid who is always on Tik Tok watch it on vertical mode, so I asked her, ‘What is this?’ and she was like, ‘Dad, who is going to tilt the phone?’. That’s when I spoke to Lehren and they wanted us to take the risk even though the budget would go overboard.” 

As for the team, they want to continue creating seasons after seasons for their audience.