Rehka Shankar is an actress, writer and comedian, whose credits include Magic for Humans and Astronomy Club: The Sketch Show. She is best known for her work on Dropout. TV Rekha is also a cast member of Dropout’s flagship show, Dimension20: Never Stop Blowing Up, an action comedy D&D show with strong Last Action Hero meets Jumani vibes. We caught up with Rekha to find out more.
What is the pitch For Never Stop Blowing Up?
If the dumbest action comedy you’ve ever seen became a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, so every character is a loose cannon goofball making goofball choices within the framework of a Jumanji-type campaign.
Your character is a little old lady. Where did the idea for that come from?
So the old lady just came from me, asking myself, “What do I like to play?”
And I love playing kind of hapless, batty, detail-oriented, like detailed characters. They kind of have a heart of gold. And I love old people. I was half-raised by my grandparents. I know how to play an old Indian lady very well. And I had just done DesiQuest, which is an all South Asian Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and played an older lady there who was kind of tough his nails. Aunty knows best!
I wanted to play something different from that. I wanted to play the kind of old lady who has issues with technology and works in the shop. She’s been there a long time, and she’s the only one who knows their internal system of bookkeeping, kind of thing. And it’s so sweet, but probably so annoying at the same time.
For my inside-the-videotape character, I just wanted to go with the opposite. What’s the opposite of an old lady who hates technology? A young hacker, and hackers are totally the type of person you see in these action comedy movies.
So I based G13 on a mix of Riley from National Treasure, the guy in the van, and kind of took it to an extreme. I wanted it to be like an insular hacker who has loyalty to nobody, who has connections to nobody except himself. All he cares about is winning. All he cares about is who we can get something from, who we can steal something from.
Playing two characters at once sounds like a challenge, especially as Dimension20 has a very strong improv vibe. How hard was it to do?
It was really hard in the first few episodes. I was having a tough time embodying G13 and Usha at the same time because I could not grasp what she would know that he wouldn’t. And what he would know that she wouldn’t. And how I would marry those because I’m like, if Usha is sitting at the computer in G13’s body, does she know what G13 does? And my mind said, No, I think this woman is Fort Knox when it comes to ingesting new information about technology. She’s like a hacker’s worst nightmare, because she cannot be taught anything. You can’t break through there to the wall. But at the same time, she’s very susceptible. She’s an older lady who’s kind of gullible, so that’s why she ends up getting hacked. So I found it very hard to marry those things. So when in doubt, I kind of just looked into the rear-view mirror of what I established for Usha and for G13, and tried to make a decision from there.
What was your favourite moment in the show?
I loved the grenade-throwing bit. When I threw the grenade, and then immediately regretted it, and then tried to catch it, and then it exploded in Alex’s hands. I thought that was so unbelievably funny. And it was just so like, like, Naked Gun type of comedy, like, so unbelievably stupid.
What’s your favourite action movie?
National Treasure. So I did look up some stuff about the hacker character from there, and I looked up some of the moves that they used in that movie. But in terms of, like, my favourite action movies, I really like, like, stuff with cool choreography. I thought, when I saw Rush Hour for the first time, I thought, like, Jackie Chan’s just incredible. Every clip I see of him is crazier than the next.
Simpsons or Futurama?
Futurama
Truth or Beauty?
Truth!
You can watch Never Stop Blowing up on Dropout.TV today. And if you have any questions, they’ve produced an FAQ. (We’ve updated this article to let you know that you can also join Dropout as Superfan, details are here.)
