Once “slacker” had been translated into “backbencher”, Shrivastava was all in.
“Being a backbencher is always fun,” he says. “But then life pushes you in ways that you have to come to the front seat and act. I think through movies, we get that chance to just relax in life.”
His real worry on set was how to address a man who was both his co-star and his director.
“I was pretty scared before, because I have to work with an actor who’s also directing the film,” he says. “Should I address him as a director? Should I address him as a co-actor?”
The fix came during the first few readings, when the pair agreed to treat each other as the friends they play on screen. Shrivastava took it seriously. He even saved Kemmu’s number under his character’s name, and kept it that way “for a good long time”.
“Kunal bhai was very much giving me that space to be comfortable with him,” he says. “That’s how the chemistry got built.”
The newcomer who didn’t freeze
For the female lead, Kemmu knew exactly what he wanted.
“I specifically had a character in mind, and I knew that I wanted to cast a new girl for it,” he says. Dhir, he adds, fit the part “like a glove”.
His real test came on day one of the shoot.
“For a newcomer, when you’re in the middle of those 300 people on set and the camera starts rolling, you can freeze,” he says. “But she surprised all of us on day one. She did it like a natural. That was a big weight off my shoulders.”
Dhir herself is refreshingly clear-eyed about her big break.
“The chances of this happening to someone are extremely slim, so I’m very well aware of that,” she says.
Her backstory has its own delicious twist. She lived in Punjab until she was nine, then moved to England barely able to speak English.
“I didn’t know how to speak three words of English, so I really struggled when I first went there,” she says. “And now I almost have the opposite problem.”
That posh accent means the Queen’s English now comes more easily than Hindi.
“I wouldn’t say I struggle with Hindi, but I do have to keep doing diction and working at it, because I do have a certain way of talking and it’s difficult to break that,” she says.
So, what’s the vibe?
I’ll confess: as a millennial, every time someone suggests a “vibe check”, I’m quietly lost. Kemmu, a fellow millennial, insists the title isn’t just a nod to Gen Z.
“Even for millennials, I remember when you entered somebody’s house, you’d say, ‘I get a negative vibe here,'” he says.
“If you choose to have an English title, a lot of people ask, will you alienate some kind of an audience? So I thought, here is a title which everybody knows, despite the fact that it’s English.”
It also suits the film’s four very different leads.
“Each and every character has their own personality,” he says. “Because these four personalities kind of come and collide in this film, Vibe was the title that suited it best.”
Shrivastava is simply enjoying the bragging rights.
“We kind of flaunt it nowadays,” he says. “I’m a part of a film which is called Vibe. How cool is that?”
For Dhir, a short English title was a quiet relief.
“I was thinking it’s going to be very difficult to explain a really long Hindi title to my British friends,” she laughs. “They were like, ‘Oh, it’s easy to remember.'”
Show me the money
As the call wraps, I can’t resist one last nudge to Kemmu about reviews.
“You can’t say you don’t care, because they definitely do affect someone,” he admits.
Critical glory is a minefield, I tell him. These days, half of them are one-word verdicts, possibly written by AI. Just show me the box office.
He hesitates, then plays along.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll take your advice.”
