​​​​

The Big Picture

Collider’s Chris McPherson speaks with
Citadel: Honey Bunny
‘s Raj Nidimoru, Krishna D.K., and Samantha Ruth Prabhu.

Citadel
expands to India with a new series,
Citadel: Honey Bunny
, set in the 1990s and focusing on the transformation of young Honey.
During this conversation, the co-directors and star discuss how the show brings in Old Bollywood style and showcases multiple regions of India, highlighting its diverse cultures and languages.

Citadel is a wildly stylish, wickedly cool connected universe. With its flagship program a massive success on Prime, the Russo Brothers’ Citadel now expands with the Italian-based series Citadel: Diana and the Indian-centered series Citadel: Honey Bunny, with globe-trotting plans in the future to bring the expanding franchise to countries like Spain and Mexico.

In Honey Bunny, directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K., and star Samantha Ruth Prabhu, present a fresh, different type of Citadel story. Rather than set in the near-future, this story takes place in the rip-roaring 1990’s, following young Honey, played by Prabhu, from a naive, aspiring young star to a dangerous spy and extremely protective mother.

Nidimoru, D.K., and Prabhu sat down with Collider’s own Chris McPherson to talk about Citadel: Honey Bunny. Together they discussed their personal approach to adding an Indian flavor to the Citadel series, the earnestness and relatability to Prabhu’s protagonist Honey, and the fun of shooting a ’90s period piece. You can watch the full conversation in the video above or read the transcript below.

Old Bollywood’s Influence on ‘Citadel: Honey Bunny’

COLLIDER: First of all, I really enjoyed the show. I love how vibrant, colorful and alive everything felt. Were there any distinctive Indian filmmaking styles that you wanted to bring to a wider audience?

RAJ NIDIMORU: More than Indian filmmaking elements, I think we want to stick to how we usually make our films. We also experiment each time we do a series or a film; we try to bring in a different style or a different genre because we like to keep experimenting with it. We wanted to stick to it. We wanted to make sure that the Russos and the showrunners were fine with it, and they were very excited about the fact we wanted to bring in a different flavor to the universe. We’re very excited that we stuck to it and made it the way we do. In this case, we went no-frills action, ’90s retro-style, bring in Old Bollywood on the screen a bit, and bring in the cinema motif throughout the series to keep it entertaining in a refreshing way, hopefully.

Related ‘Citadel’ Turns Back the Clock With the New ‘Honey Bunny’ Spin-Off Poster The spin-off series premieres on Prime Video on November 7.

Showing Off India in ‘Citadel: Honey Bunny’
“Instead of globe-trotting, we thought we could place it in different parts of India. India-trotting.”
Image via Prime Video

Citadel, the franchise itself, is about spies and the globe-trotting nature of what that involves. Did you enjoy having that freedom of being able to have the show in a more fixed location? You’re showcasing parts of India. There are different parts of the world that you see, but we’re mainly based in India. Did you feel empowered by that idea? You’ve got this budget here. You can show off parts of India, and parts of the world, that wider audiences maybe aren’t used to seeing, and think to yourself we can really show off a bit here with what we’ve got.

NIDIMORU: India is very varied that way. There are a lot of cultures, a lot of languages, and different climates in one country. Even from the first series we made called The Family Man, we tried to go as wide as possible. Otherwise, the Hindi film industry usually is focused on the Hindi content because that’s the language the movies are in. But with the series, we decided to open up to other languages. They would speak their languages, and we got subtitles for it. So we started opening up to various regions and cultures across the country. It’s a great opportunity. Instead of globe-trotting, we thought we could place it in different parts of India. India-trotting.

Samantha Ruth Prabhu’s Character “Reflects Most Women”
Image via Prime Video

Honey goes through a lot, especially in these first episodes that we’ve been able to see. What was the most challenging aspect to you? We see Honey over two different periods of time. What were the challenges for you as an actor to showcase the dual personalities? The one that doesn’t know what’s going on into the fighter that we get to see.

SAMANTHA RUTH PRABHU: I think Honey is very relatable. She reflects most women, actually. She’s young, she’s naive, she’s exuberant. She has big dreams to make it in Bollywood, and life doesn’t always turn out the way we dream it could be. So she ends up becoming a spy and circumstances in her life lead her to become a single mother. She’s protecting her little cub at any cost. So this is a different woman completely from the little girl she started out as. It was easy to draw from my own life. That’s what is so interesting about Honey is that she’s a survivor. She’s a fighter. There’s a story of hope. There’s a story of a mother and a character that displays great strength. It was extremely exciting and thrilling to try and get this right. It was a wide canvas to play around with.

As you refer to there, she’s a mother, and the young girl who plays Nadia is unbelievable . Where did you find her? What’s her story?

KRISHNA D.K.: She’s a discovery, and we lucked out, right? The casting director brought her to the table, and she showed us the auditions. We fell in love with her. We cast her based on that. We met her, and she’s a very pretty, smart kid. She’s actually too smart for her age, if I may say so. Only later we discovered that she’s never acted before. [Laughs] Yeah, she’s never acted before. She’s never learned acting. It’s just instinctively, naturally, she’s doing everything that a trained actor would do. It’s amazing. So I have this newfound respect for kids now. It’s like you don’t know what they’re capable of.

How Do All Three ‘Citadel’ Shows Interact?
“All of these have strong female lead characters and that’s a happy commonality to have.”
Image via Prime Video

We have the three shows now, three very strong female characters at the heart of it. Have you had discussions with the creators of the other shows as well? Is there a narrative throughline in terms of how you wanted to construct the shows to make sure that you’ve got three distinctively strong characters at the core of them? What traits do you think that they all share?

DK: All of us have been in the loop of the other shows. We read the American show’s screenplays when we were developing. The Italian show was in development at the same time as us, and eventually we shared our screenplays with them. They shared their screenplays with us. We are all in the know about all of our characters and stories. If there is an occasional “looks like a duplication” kind of a thing, all of us, we would get in the writers’ rooms on a regular basis and figure those things out. Otherwise, distinctively, our show is so far apart and different from both the American and the Italian shows. The problem of feeling like we’re repeating things, I don’t think that even exists. But yes, all of these have strong female lead characters and that’s a happy commonality to have.

The Fun of Making a ’90s Period Piece
Image via Prime Video

The last thing I’d like to touch on is, with the other two shows, they take place in the near future. We have fancy technology, these kinds of things. One of the things I like the most about the show is we’re in the past. How much fun did you have filming in the ’90s? Are there are things that you weren’t able to bring into it that you wanted to? What kind of throwback things were you really excited to put on screen?

DK: I mean, you just said it right? Fun. What kind of fun you have. You kind of said the answer to the question. We really, really wanted to have fun.

NIDIMORU: We had an eight gigabyte data that needs to be decrypted. You see one of the scenes that he has assembled some 20–25 CPUs to read this thing, and he’s like, “You have no idea how hard it is, how much data this is.” Those kinds of things were a lot of fun. Especially as techies, as ex-techies. We were doing a lot of these throwbacks to the ’90s.

Citadel: Honey Bunny is now streaming on Prime Video.

The Indian spin-off of the international spy franchise, Citadel.Release Date November 7, 2024 Cast Samantha Ruth Prabhu , Varun Dhawan , Kay Kay Menon , Simran , Saqib Saleem , Sikandar Kher , Soham Majumdar , Shivankit Singh Parihar , Emma Canning Streaming Service(s) Prime Video