05 September,2026 07:25 AM IST | Mumbai | Priyanka Sharma
Parineeti Chopra
A mother's love is at the heart of creator Siddharth P Malhotra's upcoming series, Shaque: Trust No One. Call it a coincidence or what you will, but leading lady Parineeti Chopra was taking her first steps towards motherhood during the shoot of the Netflix series. On a call with mid-day, Malhotra recalled that casting Chopra as the central character was his first thought when director and co-creator Rensil D'Silva brought the story to him.
"Parineeti was our first choice. We had been speaking for a long time. When I read it, I told Rensil that we should go to her," he recounted.
Even as a tense thriller of a mother's relentless search for her kidnapped child played out on camera, off it, the energy was far from that. The creator shared that co-producer and wife Sapna Malhotra and he took special care of Chopra, who was pregnant at the time of the shoot. "We got to know that Pari was pregnant. She continued shooting and didn't tell us, but we had an inkling. She is like a sister to me. Between Sapna and me, we ensured that we took care of her, [treating] her with kid gloves," he said of Chopra, who welcomed her baby boy in October 2025.
As he readies Shaque's trailer, it marks the culmination of a journey that began more than eight years ago. "It's based on a newspaper report. When Rensil narrated it to me, I told him we have to turn it into a series. After Netflix loved the idea, there was no looking back."
The first look of the series, then titled âTalaash: A Mother's Search', was unveiled at the Netflix slate announcement event in February 2026. What brought on the title change? "It was written as âShaque', but we were not getting the title as it was registered with someone else. So, we went with âTalaash'. [Fortunately] later, we got it," said Malhotra
