Writer-director Karan Anshuman is returning to the streaming space with a new show. Glory, his latest title, merges both his favourite genres – sports and crime. But Glory is far removed from Inside Edge’s glitz as it is from Mirzapur’s rusticness. Set in Haryana, it follows two brothers – both former boxers – investigating a gruesome crime that has shaken their family, and may have ties to India’s Olympic hopes in boxing.
Ahead of the show’s trailer launch in Mumbai, creator Karan Anshuman sat with Hindustan Times to discuss the world he built for Glory, its ‘genre mashup’, and why he wants the depiction of boxing in Indian entertainment to a new level with the show.
HT: How did the idea for Glory come about? How did this world originate?
KA: I’ve always been interested in sports. After Inside Edge, I just wanted to make a comeback to sports in some manner. But I also realised that it couldn’t be like a straightforward story. What you don’t want to make is another underdog story. We’ve seen enough of those in every biopic, and it’s the same template. So I thought we could do a genre mashup, for the lack of a better word. So, I merged something I am familiar with, with something that I haven’t done before, which is a mystery. That was a challenge I was really interested in taking up.
HT: And how did boxing come into the picture?
KA: I was enamoured of the culture of sports in Haryana and how much it means to its large population. Haryana is the one place that promotes sports so much. That felt like the perfect setting for Glory. So we went and explored these places like Rohtak and Bhiwani, and we were just blown away by how intense it is. What you see in the show is just a slight exaggeration of what’s going on there.
HT: Your shows have always been a heigthened reality zone where they feel real, but take liberties. Is that your voice?
KA: If you see my stuff, it’s always like it’s always taking something and then just elevating it. That is mainly so that we can create a world where we have our own rules, where certain things just go, and it has to be reality adjacent. That’s very important. So it’s relatable.
HT: The show is set in Shaktigarh, a fictional town in Haryana. What was the reasoning behind that, instead of setting it in a Bhiwani, for instance, which is actually India’s boxing capital.
KA: We are referring to Shaktigarh as Chhota Cuba, which we borrowed from Bhiwani. Then, we have put the Indian boxing headquarters over there, which is actually in Rohtak. So we have just mixed and matched a whole bunch of things and put them all in one. There’s also some real-life incidents, stories and anecdotal reports that we pulled from. That’s again something I really love leaning into. There’s also a sense that this is a town where these brothers come back after a long hiatus. So, it’s like the western trope of the cowboy returning.
HT: While the show is a mystery, boxing is central to it, particularly with so many bouts shown, and your actors playing boxers themselves. What were your thoughts when depicting the fights?
KA: What we were going for was to give the best boxing that we’ve seen on Indian entertainment in any manner. Hence, we had to get people who are invested in that idea. We involved a whole bunch of Indian boxers, who were involved in the training and also had little cameos. They were fun to work with. Pulkit (Samrat) had to train so much, and sometimes I felt like we spent more time dissecting his footwork and seeing how authentic that was as opposed to the amount of time we spent doing script reads, because for me, it was more important that you just give them the space and just see what comes out in the most natural manner.
Glory stars Pulkit Samrat, Divyenndu, and Suvinder Vicky. The series premieres on Netflix on May 1.