Jubilee and the many true stories Vikramaditya Motwane bases his series on

Vikramaditya Motwane recently dropped his 10-episode miniseries Jubilee on Prime Video. Recreating the 'Golden Era of Bollywood', the series explores several characters making their career in showbiz in a newly Independent India.

The series is largely fictional, even though many of its characters and films are inspired by real-life examples. Even actual historical personalities in the film industry like Mughal-e-Azam director K Asif and actor Dev Anand are name-dropped, leaving a plethora of pop culture references for Bollywood buffs. 

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Prosenjit Chatterjee’s Srikant Roy might be inspired by the Bombay Talkies founder

Bengali actor Prosenjit stars in Jubilee as manipulative producer Srikant Roy. Under his own Roy Talkies banner, he has launched many new faces and plans to launch yet another star under the screen name, Madan Kumar. 

It is highly likely that Roy is directly inspired by Himanshu Rai who founded the famous Bombay Talkies studio in 1934, kickstarting the early Hollywood style of the studio system in India. In Rai’s era, actors were required to sign contracts with studios for doing a specific number of films. While Rai’s public reputation was not as notorious as that of Jubilee’s Roy, he was responsible for launching several stars like Dilip Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Madhubala.

Even though different visionaries were behind the advent of playback singing in Bollywood and radio countdown shows like Radio Ceylon (that managed to overturn the ban on film songs on public radio in the 1940s), Jubilee shows Prosenjit’s character as the mastermind behind such moves. While the widescreen Cinemascope format was first used for Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz ke Phool, Jubilee again depicts Roy as the man who introduces Cinemascope to India with a fictional film called Kashmir Ke Phool (a reference to both Dutt’s magnum opus and the Shammi Kapoor-starrer Kashmir Ki Kali). 

Madan Kumar: Muslim actor, Hindu name

Before Aparshakti Khurana’s Binod Das becomes Madan Kumar, the mantle is to be taken by theatre actor Jamshed Khan (Nandish Singh Sandhu). This was not the first time a 40s-era Muslim actor took on a Hindu name. 

The legendary Dilip Kumar, who is known for pioneering method acting in Bollywood, was actually born as Mohammed Yusuf Khan in Peshawar (modern-day Pakistan). Similarly, Begum Mumtaz Jehan Dehlavi adopted the stage name Madhubala. 

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Irrespective of religion, many actors of that era were known from their stage names such as Dev Anand whose actual name was Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand. 

Andolan: Vikramaditya Motwane plays tribute to his grandfather

When the character Jai Khanna debuts his film Taxi Driver, the CBFC film certificate in the start is an altered copy of an actual film’s rating certificate. The 1951 film Andolan touched upon the freedom struggle and had series director Vikramaditya Motwane’s grandfather Harnam Motwane serving as one of the producers. 

Even though the film flopped at the box office, Motwane kept its legacy alive by naming his own production company Andolan Films. Andolan is later even mentioned in the penultimate episode as a then-film in progress. 

Jai Khanna: A mix of Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt

Jai Khanna (Sidhant Gupta) is a cinema-loving director, writer and actor in Jubilee who makes films more for his passion than the profits. With Madan Kumar refusing to act in Khanna’s debut Taxi Driver, Jai stars in the film himself while also writing and directing it. His visionary persona and multiple talents echo faint inspirations from Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt, both of whom were multi-talented personalities. 

Visually speaking, even the black-and-white song “Na Koi Mera” featured in Khanna’s second film Baiju Awara seems to be heavily inspired by “Ghar Aaya Mera Pardesi” from Raj Kapoor’s Awaara and “Hum Aapki Aankhon Mein” from Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa. 

Khanna initially relies on others for funding but Jubilee’s ending shows him as competent enough to start his own banner much like how Raj Kapoor started RK Films. 

The Soviet obsession with Bollywood stars

Raj Kapoor’s Chaplinesque “Tramp”  image in Awaara and Shree 420 resonated with audiences of the erstwhile Soviet Union, making Kapoor a “working class hero”. With then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru attempting to hold cordial relations with the Russians, marketing Kapoor as a pro-Soviet star worked in Kapoor’s favour. Songs like “Awaara Hoon” are still commonly heard among citizens in Russia and former Soviet states. 

This Soviet craze in Bollywood also plays an integral role in Jubilee as the producers behind Khanna’s film broker a deal between Khanna and the Soviet culture ministry. Awaara itself is subtly referenced with Khanna’s second film being Baiju Awaara (an amalgamation of Kapoor’s Awaara as well as the 1952 superhit Baiju Bawra that revolved around a classical singer). 

Even though Khanna doesn’t make films intentionally for Soviet audiences, the anti-imperialist themes in his work and his portrayal of working class heroes fighting the rich perfectly go in line with Kapoor’s image of a poor drifter in his early films. 

Sumitra Kumari’s affair is a nod to Devika Rani

Srikant Roy also shares a troubled relationship with his wife Sumitra Kumari (Aditi Rao Hydari), a leading heroine and co-owner of Roy Talkies. While Rai’s wife Devika Rani was not as powerful a businesswoman as Sumitra Kumari, she too was a renowned actress. She also assisted Himanshu Rai in the costume and art direction departments of his productions. 

The great grandniece of Rabindranath Tagore, Rani was one of Bollywood’s earliest heroines and enjoyed a successful career during the 1930s and 1940s. After she married Himanshu Rai, she too had a highly-publicised affair with her co-star Najam ul Hussain, with whom she appeared in the first Bombay Talkies production Jawani Ki Hawa, in 1935. The couple even briefly eloped, following which Hussain never appeared in a Bombay Talkies production again. 

The comparisons with Jubilee are obvious as Sumitra Rani also plans to elope with Jamshed Khan (who is being roped in to play Madan Kumar in a Roy Talkies film).