“We conducted investigations in this case and we determined it was appropriate to go forward with Vikram and Anurag,” said Netflix CCO Tedd Sarandos while defending his decision to greenlight the second season of the popular show Sacred Games. Sarandos was talking to Anupama Chopra at the Mumbai Film Festival.
Starring Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte, Sacred Games which was jointly directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane aired on July 6 and was met with unanimous praise. Popular opinion warranted a second season, and talks began shortly thereafter.
However, the show received a setback when Vikas Bahl, a partner at the now-dissolved Phantom Films, along with Kashyap and Motwane, got embroiled in a sexual assault controversy by a former employee at the company and Kashyap was accused of not taking action against him.
Despite all this, Netflix, on October 23, had given a clean chit to the director duo as well as to Varun Grover, the writer of the show who was accused in a separate sexual harassment claim. Sarandos, when asked why the streaming giant had terminated House of Cards actor Kevin Spacey and comedian Louise CK in the west clarified his stand saying that his company’s sexual harassment policies were uniform throughout the world.
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“We conducted investigations in this case and we determined it was appropriate to go forward with Vikram and Anurag and it has nothing to do with anything before or anything anywhere else. We believe on the basis of the facts that the investigation was appropriate,” said Sarandos.
He also added, “We have an instituted harassment training at all our productions everywhere and it is same in India, the programme is same in India that we have in the US and everywhere in the world.”
Motwane in an earlier interview had said that he wouldn’t be directing the second season, instead would choose to remain as the showrunner.
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