Meet Suparn Varma, the filmmaker giving the villain his due

In Suparn Varma’s shows, people are rarely just good or evil. As the lines blur, characters get complicated, more compelling. And he creates hit after hit

Suparn Varma doesn’t enjoy creating heroes. He’d rather create a flawed, more realistic character who doesn’t always go by the book, who is wracked by the same pangs of guilt that a fallen angel would. “I don’t see life in binary terms such as good and evil,” says the 40-year-old director and screenwriter. “It comes down to choices. Sometimes you make choices for yourself, which may be unfair to others; sometimes you make choices for others that are unfair to you. That’s how we live life. It’s a series of choices that we keep making.”

In Rana Naidu (2023 -) Suparn Varma wrote the characters played by Rana Dagubatti and Venkatesh Daggubatti as regular men, driven by moral complications rather than innate hero or villain traits.

Varma has directed The Trial (2023), creatively directed Rana Naidu (2023), directed Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai (2023) and written and directed The Family Man (2021-). None of the characters he writes or directs are fully good or evil.

The Trial is an adaptation of the American courtroom drama The Good Wife, starring Kajol as a housewife who returns to work at a law firm, 13 years after leaving, to support her family after her husband is imprisoned.