On Richie Mehta’s Poacher, Alia Bhatt serves as an executive producer. “It’s a fancy word,” she laughs, not one to care about jargon. Bhatt’s role is etched out in her mind—put simply, she is throwing her might behind a story that struck a chord with her. “I responded to the show on a personal level. My first feeling was, ‘Wow,’” she smiles.
With Poacher, creator-director Mehta of Delhi Crime (2019) fame has turned his attention to the rampant ivory poaching in Kerala, crafting an investigative thriller that features Nimisha Sajayan, Roshan Mathew, and Dibyendu Bhattacharya. While Bhatt turned producer in 2022 with Darlings, the Amazon Prime Video offering marks her series debut. “It’s a first of its kind for me and Eternal Sunshine Productions. We are [mostly] developing projects from scratch; this is the first where we have come in at a later stage. At the end of the day, you want people to see the story, and what’s most important is whether you can contribute to it in any way. [Executive producing] is backing and putting your voice, time and energy in content that you believe in. Here, because I wasn’t part of it since its inception, [I focused on] what I can do to amplify the show’s reach.”
Backing Poacher was a no-brainer for Bhatt, owing to its impactful storytelling. Plus, it united her with Mehta, a filmmaker with whom she has been keen to collaborate. “There is [powerful] storytelling that Richie has put in the show. Plus, the cause it speaks about hits the spot. Stories like these should be told in an entertaining way so that everyone can consume them. Crime is the most watched genre globally. To weave a story like this within the genre of crime is not easy. Poacher plays out like a crime show. Audiences need an emotional hook, which Richie gives them.”
