How ‘7 Days’ Co-Stars Karan Soni and Geraldine Viswanathan Shot a Pandemic Rom-Com in One Week

thewrap.com:

only two characters (save for some Zoom and phone cameos) commanding the film’s 86-minute runtime, casting was a matter of make-or-break importance.

Soni, who considers himself a performer at heart, was always going to play Ravi. For Rita, they had only one choice: the person they’d had in mind while writing the role, Geraldine Viswanathan.Soni and Viswanathan had been close friends since they started co-starring in the TBS comedy “Miracle Workers” in 2017.

Still, Soni acknowledges that it was a big ask.“It’s one thing [for Sethi and I to do it] because we co-wrote it, like, this is our baby so we’ll do whatever [it takes] – blood, sweat, tears – to make it,” he said. “It’s another thing to [say to] someone else, ‘We’re not gonna pay you a lot of money, will you risk working at this time?’”Luckily, Viswanathan was game. “I just fell in love with the script and had a really good instinct about it,” she recalled. “I was also really excited to collaborate on something again and be in a room with people.”Although filming during the pandemic was a “risk,” she felt safe in the hands of her friends.

It helped that Sethi was also an oncologist who had recently completed his residency at a Boston COVID ward, ensuring that he would handle the subject with sensitivity.Her offscreen friendship with Soni proved vital during the lightning-fast shoot. “I think just knowing each other really well and having that kind of shorthand and easy banter made it really easy when we were shooting like 15 pages a day, and we would get like one or two takes to do a scene,” she said. “I think it would have been really difficult if we were unfamiliar with each other.”Soni agreed, praising his co-star for her talent and willingness to embrace the “no.