Amazon Prime Video’s first-ever legal series, Guilty Minds is about to bring a heavy courtroom drama to the audience. It’s not just the director Shefali Bhushan, who comes from a family of lawyers, who went through some hard preparation to create this web series, but leading actors Shriya Pilgaonkar and Varun Mitra also went an extra mile to prepare for their characters. This included visiting a High Courts and Trial Courts for their research.

Shriya Pilgaonkar, who made a visit to Delhi High Court shared her experience: “I spoke to my lawyer friends and visited the high court a few times for research. It was important for me to understand their approach towards their profession. Clearly the courts are not always as dramatic as we have seen them represented on screen. While observing some lawyers, I realized that every lawyer brings their own persona and style while presenting themselves, and they are also performers in that sense. The challenge was to not play into the stereotype of a lawyer but to perform with authenticity and as realistic as possible without trying too hard. I didn’t want to be too cerebral about it. I completely trusted Shefali to guide me through the process. She said to me that I just have to trust that I am Kashaf and just go with the flow. I had so much fun.”

Varun Mitra made a visit to a trial court in Mumbai and said: “I went to the trial court in Mumbai with a lawyer friend before the shoot began. We entered many sessions that were ongoing and in one of the courtrooms my eyes fell upon a lawyer who I was told was known to be theatrical and animated and also loved by the judges. He walked into the courtroom with a swagger and came alive while arguing his case. What I took from him was that he was “enjoying” himself while arguing the case. I think I was destined to see him that day. That day was the birth of Deepak Rana.”

Director Shefali Bhushan added, “A lot of research went into making this series because we wanted very accurate arguments and references to the sections of the IPC. So whatever topic we have chosen, we actually read up a lot of law around that topic. We consulted with lawyers. Two bonafide lawyers were in our writer’s room as well, Manav, Bhushan who studied law but not practicing, and Deeksha Gujral who is a practicing lawyer. So yes, we went into a lot of research.”

Co-directed by Jayant Digambar Somalkar, and produced by Karan Grover, Antara Banerjee, and Naved Farooqui, Guilty Minds will exclusively stream on Amazon Prime Video from April 22nd, 2022.

(Featured Image Credits: Instagram)