By Naman Ramachandran

Ananya Panday literally couldn’t put the script for “Call Me Bae” down. “I read all eight episodes in one night because I couldn’t put it down,” the Bollywood star told Variety of her new Prime Video series.

Written by Ishita Moitra, Samina Motlekar and Rohit Nair, “Call Me Bae” tells the story of Bae, a young woman who is demoted from heiress to hustler after a scandal. She discovers that her most valuable assets aren’t her diamonds, but her street smarts and her style. Broke but refusing to be broke, she navigates the newsrooms of Mumbai, where she finds boyfriends, sisterhood and her better self. Karan Johar, Apoorva Mehta and Somen Mishra, as executive producers for their Dharmatic Entertainment, give a glittering pedigree to the Hindi-language series.

The script, directed by Collin D'Cunha, struck Panday from the start. "For me as an actor, the biggest draw is my first reaction and my first instinct after reading something — when I just feel like I have to be a part of the story," she explained. The actor praised the script's balance, noting, "There's a certain tone, in terms of the lightness and the humor, and the chick-flick quality that it has, but it also really says something at the end."