Reema Maya on Shanaya Kapoor’s SOTY After Dark Double Role

Student of the Year is stepping out of its glossy campus fantasy and into something sharper. Director Reema Maya is reimagining the franchise with Student of the Year: After Dark, a young-adult thriller that keeps the familiar world of competition but trades the celebration for a darker look at what that pressure does to young people.

In an exclusive conversation with Pinkvilla, Maya discussed the shift, the preparation behind Shanaya Kapoor’s double role, and the real-world anxieties the story draws from. The project also stars Divik Sharma, Manya Grover and Mannat Duggal.

Here is what the conversation tells us:

• The franchise is being reimagined as an angsty, gritty young-adult thriller.
• Shanaya Kapoor plays two distinct characters, Aditi and Ayesha.
• The story is built around competition, validation and the cost of constant comparison.

A double role built character by character

Maya said her directing process starts with conversation rather than instruction. She sits down with actors as individuals, learns where their lived experience intersects with the role, and builds a shared understanding before the shoot gets hectic.

For Kapoor, that meant treating Aditi and Ayesha as separate people from the beginning: different motivations, different histories, different ways of dressing, speaking and feeling. Maya credits the preparation for making an emotionally demanding shoot workable.

“It was a lot of clear separation between who Aditi is, who Ayesha is, what motivates each character,” Maya said. “I think Shanaya worked really hard. She was very prepared.”

Why the darkness feels close to home

Maya described the series as a young adult competition thriller that speaks to the hyper-competitive mindset today’s youth face, whether that pressure comes from grades, popularity, social media attention or the need to be seen as successful.

The story asks what that constant comparison does to friendships, relationships and identity. She said the creative team kept returning to a question: are the people we call grey simply good kids stuck in bad situations, and what would life look like if we were not always pit against one another?

For a generation that grew up performing on social media, the tension is not abstract. It is the emotional core of the reimagined franchise.

More room for indie voices, but not enough

Maya also addressed the changing shape of the industry. Streaming and social media have made the space more democratic, she said, and the lines between indie and commercial filmmaking are blurring. But she wants the industry to go further.

Her own creative influences include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the French short L’homme sans tête, films she says showed her that a clear idea can find unexpected ways to reach an audience.

For fans of the franchise, After Dark looks like a deliberate reset: same obsession with being number one, but with the lights turned down and the consequences turned up.

Source: PINKVILLA

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#Bollywood#Indian Cinema#Pinkvilla exclusive#Reema Maya#Shanaya Kapoor#SOTY#Student of the Year After Dark#Young adult thriller