A glittery silk saree and the quintessential bindi-lipstick-mangalsutra trope never really appealed to Sukhmani Sadana. A writer at heart, her debut in the serial Khotey Sikkey as Uttara Bakshi; scripts for television shows such as MTV’s Tech Check and Wasp and films such as Vikram Bhatt’s 1920, Horror Story and Creature; and documentaries for Incredible India speak of her need to be outside traditional cliches.
Sadana will now appear in the digital space on Sony LIV’s first-of-its-kind fiction show created exclusively for the web, #LoveBytes. A signature series of the channel, the seven-minute episodes directed by Vishal Mull, go live on September 7.
Sadana calls it a new-age show, one that’s “urban and deliciously youthful”. “Each episode plays out the trials and tribulations of the relationship between its leading characters, Ananya (Sadana) and Abhishek (Kushal Punjabi),” says Sadana. She plays a 26-year old girl from Lucknow, who has been working in Mumbai for six years. Abhishek, on the other hand, is a 28-year-old copywriter in a media firm. While she is reticent and reserved, he is a party animal, ambitious and affable all at once.
It’s Mad About Love meets Whitney kind of romcom. “This is for the cosmopolitan crowd, for youngsters who don’t watch daily dramas on television,” says Sadana.
An Amritsar native, Sadana studied at a boarding school in Dehradun, Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, and Xavier’s Institute of Communication, Mumbai. Currently, she awaits the release of Kunal Kohli’s controversial Phir Se for which she has written the screenplay and dialogues. “Then there is 1920 Part 3 that stars Sharman Joshi, a romantic film with Tips and Ishq Vishq Part 2,” she says.