#TheAfterHour: “In a strange way, while reading Perfect Family’s script, it felt like therapy for me” - Sachin Pathak

Director Sachin Pathak talks to us about what it was like crafting a show that oscillates between a therapy room and a home where a joint family lives with generational cycles of trauma!

Every time you watch a character harm themselves or go through a panic attack or depressive episode, you’re often left feeling that there was more to explore a deeper why behind the behaviour, beyond simply showing it as a coping mechanism. That’s exactly whatPerfect Family does. It places a dysfunctional family front and centre, one that insists on presenting itself as perfect, sorted, and “normal.” But when a young child suffers a panic attack, the entire family, from parents, grandparents to aunts, is forced into family therapy. Like layers of an onion being peeled, buried emotions and long-held silences begin to surface, revealing the humans behind the dysfunction in their truest form.

Featuring an ensemble cast including Manoj Pahwa, Seema Pahwa, Gulshan Devaiah, Girija Oak and Kaveri Seth, with Neha Dhupia as their therapist, the series uses humour and therapy to enter lanes of mental health we’ve rarely explored, especially within a family setup. And what better vehicle than a dysfunctional Punjabi-Delhi family to unpack generational trauma and its cyclical nature? In this conversation, director Sachin Pathak walks us through how the show’s visual language was shaped and built through confined spaces, gestures and micro-expressions allowing emotion to speak as loudly as dialogue, even with child actors on board!

Also Read: #BehindTheLens: “Perfect Family is about a family jahan bolte kuch aur hain, aur sach kuch aur hota hai.” — Palak Bhambri

Here’s what he had to say!

Sachin, visually the show often feels framed at a child’s eye level without emotional moments feeling overperformed, even by children. How did you approach this?

Sachin Pathak: I feel extremely fortunate to have worked with these child actors. Hirva is a very perceptive child. I had seen her work earlier and, during auditions, it became clear that she could convey a lot without saying much. She could communicate through silence, stillness and that was very important for this story. Therapy as a subject is still a taboo for many people. So for the audience to take these therapy sessions seriously, they needed an emotional way in which would be possible with a child. The idea was that the audience holds Dani’s hand and enters this world with her.

In the first big argument scene, Dani is mostly just listening. And I truly believe children imitate what they see. If there’s conflict, tension, or negativity at home, they absorb it quietly. That’s why we added details like doors slamming - each door closing is like another emotional punch landing on the child. It’s impact after impact and that’s what pulls the audience in before the focus gradually shifts to the rest of the family.

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How rare is it for you, as a director, to get a script like this?

SP: Very rare, honestly. I’ve done thrillers before where the engagement comes from suspense - kisne kiya, aage kya hoga. But this was different. While reading this script, I was personally going through a lot, and in a strange way, it felt like therapy for me. I remember thinking that if it’s affecting me like this, it will definitely affect the audience too. When viewers watch those therapy room scenes, they’re almost sitting there with the characters. And I always say this - it takes a lot of talent to ruin a good script, and I don’t have that talent. If the writing is strong, your job is to elevate it, not over-manipulate it.

Do you think the therapy-room structure works in the show’s favour, almost like therapy itself, where characters are peeled layer by layer?

SP:This was something we genuinely trusted the audience with. If you’re already walking with the character, understanding them, feeling their pain, then when you suddenly see them in therapy, it doesn’t feel like a flip. It feels like unlocking another layer of their personality. These are sides that don’t come out in front of family or society but they come out in front of a stranger because that space allows honesty. 

With such clearly defined and confined spaces like a therapy room versus home, how do you, as a director, bring out emotion without it feeling restrictive, especially when the writing relies so heavily on micro-expressions and intimate, subtle details like Megha noticing hands or Somnath’s small physical habits?

SP: Therapy, for me, is less about reaching a destination and more about the beauty of the journey. You don’t always get solutions there but what you do get is time. Even a few seconds where you become aware that anger is about to surface. In that pause, you’re given a choice - do you let it come or do you stop it? That awareness is what therapy offers and that feeling guided how we approached these confined spaces. The emotion isn’t loud - it’s something that slowly arrives. The script already had those moments written in - Megha noticing small gestures, reactions passing silently between characters. What was important, and something Palak was very clear about, was tracking reactions constantly.

If Somnath speaks, Seema reacts. If Seema speaks, Neeti absorbs it. And the collective emotional weight of all of this ultimately lands on Dani. Even in chaos, there’s a rhythm. And then there’s the child - completely unaffected, asleep through all this conflict. That contrast was intentional. He exists in his own zone, occasionally popping in with a “Hari Om,” bringing lightness to an otherwise heavy space. Off camera, he was a character in himself, some days he didn’t want to shoot at all, and we had to coax him endlessly. But when he gave it a shot, it was perfect. That unpredictability, that innocence, added another layer to the environment, life continuing quietly even when emotions are at their most intense.

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The flashbacks, especially in episodes four and five, stood out because while they’re childhood memories, they’re not framed as dreamy or whimsical. Instead, they feel painfully real. What guided that approach, and how did it shape your collaboration with the actors?

SP: Usually, we don’t remember memories in such detail, most of the time, we only recall fragments. But these memories aren’t fragments. They’re extremely clear because they deeply impacted the characters. Every memory Palak wrote carries a strong emotional imprint, and that’s why, in my head, they always existed in complete detail. Because of that, we consciously avoided making the flashbacks whimsical or stylised. There’s a beauty in simplicity. The simpler you present these moments, the more powerful they become. We wanted to show the house honestly, how people lived there without manipulating or beautifying it artificially. This is a very character-driven story; there aren’t many plot-heavy moments. It’s more about what someone has suppressed inside, what they want to say, and what they’re unable to say.

That’s also why the generational parallels were important. In episodes five and six, you see three generations together - Neeti, her mother, and Dani in one home; Somnath, Vishnu, and Daksh in another. Their bonding, even the way they sleep similarly by the end, visually shows a generational cycle. Vishnu is the only slight deviation, but otherwise, those small physical details quietly reinforce inherited behaviour. That’s how we kept strengthening the characters, through these subtle choices. We spent nearly two to two-and-a-half months just preparing this. Arun Pandey (DOP), Parikshit (editor and creative producer), and I sat together extensively, and then with Palak and Adhiraj, we locked the grammar of the show very tightly. Once that was done, it became our reference paper that this is what we follow.

But when it comes to actors, I don’t believe in restricting them too much. This is my seventh series, and I’ve learned a lot over the years, including my time working with Nishikant Kamat sir. One thing I strongly follow is allowing actors to improvise in the first few days. I always tell them: let’s do one take your way, one take my way. Eventually, the edit is in my hands, we’ll decide what stays. If you don’t put up walls and instead make actors feel comfortable, that’s when they truly begin to enter the character’s psyche. That’s when they start thinking understanding what feels right and what doesn’t. There are four perspectives at play - the writer’s, director’s, editor’s, and actor’s and the actor’s point of view is crucial. Until they feel safe, they won’t fully give themselves to the character. What to keep and what to discard, that decision ultimately comes later, but the freedom at the start is essential.

Do you think the emotional impact would have been different if the camera stayed with the characters as they explained their feelings, instead of cutting to visual cues? Some might call that spoon-feeding. How do you see it?

Sachin: I don’t see it as spoon-feeding at all. For me, cinema is about making the audience feel what the character is feeling. When Vishnu talks about swimming and we cut to those visuals, the intention was to place the audience inside his body - the breathlessness, the panic, the water filling in. Staying only on the face wouldn’t have conveyed that physical helplessness. Empathy works best when you experience it firsthand. If the audience can see the child’s fear, they understand his point of view more deeply. Especially in a show dealing with mental health, empathy, and therapy, it becomes important to communicate clearly across generations and audiences. This genre demands a certain openness, not to restrict understanding, but to open doors for people who may be encountering these ideas for the first time.

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Was there a moment in the show that felt especially cathartic for you?

Sachin: Neeti’s final fight. After so much therapy, she’s the one who carries everything inside, and when it finally comes out, it’s explosive. That scene was almost a single take as well. There are also smaller moments. I love the quiet gestures, the pauses, even when the crew would just sit and listen during therapy scenes. Those silences mattered.

Perfect Family is currently streaming on YouTube!

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