EXCLUSIVE: Indian cricket legend Virender Sehwag is swapping the bat and pads for a suit and microphone.

The sporting superstar, known as the Sultan of Multan, has been unveiled as host for Season 2 of Rise and Fall, Prime Video India’s reality series to replace Ashnee Grover. This marks the first time he’ll front a streaming TV show.

Sehwag’s role was revealed in a trailer that you can watch above. The 1-minute 44-second trailer sees him playing versions of Albert Einstein, a doctor, a teacher and a karate yellow belt in a series of vignettes before a skyscraper building flashes on screen and the retired batsman switches to a sharp suit. “In Rise and Fall, the game of up and down is going to be very twisted,” he says to camera.

Sehwag has long been eyed as an on-screen presence thanks to his sharp wit and straight-talking style. He retired from cricket in 2015 after a glittering career in which he became one of India’s most destructive opening batsmen and the country’s vice-captain for large portions of his international career.

Numerous Indian cricketers have taken the TV pathway as their careers wound down with former Test team captain Rohit Sharma recently announcing a show, Family Full House, for Sony Entertainment Television and the likes of Ajay Jadeja and Shikhar Dhawan also fronting shows. Sourav Ganguly is the current presenter of Bigg Boss Bangla, the Bengali-language version of Big Brother, which kicked off its most recent season on August 30.

Rise and Fall Season 2 was announced in March after the first run became a huge hit for Amazon’s MX Player, which has since been subsumed into Prime Video. The show is a remake of the Studio Lambert format for UK network Channel 4, though that version was cancelled after one season due to low ratings. The Indian show, from Banijay Asia, has been the breakout for the format.

Set across the contrasting worlds of a penthouse and the basement in the same highrise building, the game brings together 15 celebrities, who are divided into two groups, the Rulers and the Workers. While the Rulers enjoy the privileges of the penthouse, the Workers navigate the realities of the basement. Should the Rulers. Over the course of challenges, members of the Workers are able to replace Rulers in the penthouse, changing their fortunes and the tide of the game.

“The love and excitement audiences showed for Rise and Fall in its first season gave us the perfect reason to take this unique power game forward,” said Amogh Dusad, Director and Head of AVOD Content, Prime Video India. “Season 2 brings a fresh set of personalities into a format where power is always in motion, and every decision carries a consequence.

“With Virender Sehwag stepping in as host, we’re bringing a whole new energy to the show; his wit, spontaneity, and fearless personality make him an exciting fit for the game. We’re excited for audiences to experience the drama, strategy and entertainment in Rise and Fall Season 2, and watch it on Prime Video for free.”

Sehwag compared the gameplay to a professional match. “Cricket has taught me one thing – no match is won before the final ball, and Rise and Fall Season 2 takes that unpredictability to another level,” he said. “As a host, what excites me about this game is that there are no easy wins and no fixed positions. The biggest challenge isn’t just getting to the top but knowing how to stay there. You have to know when to attack, when to defend, and, most importantly, when to read the game before it reads you.”

Deepak Dhar, Founder and Group CEO of Banijay Asia, said the “overwhelming response that Rise and Fall received in its debut season reaffirmed the strength of its unique premise, where power, strategy and human behaviour come together to create an unpredictable game.”

No launch date or contestant casting as been revealed yet, but the show will stream free on Prime Video and the MX Player Android app, which is still available under a a new identity – MX Player by Prime Video.

In the first and best of many late ‘70s needle drops that punctuate Being Heumann, the punchy guitar groove of Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” starts out over a close-up of wheels turning on pavement before the camera pulls back to take in disability rights activist Judy Heumann, maneuvering her wheelchair around crowded city streets and refusing to be intimidated even when a bus driver is bearing down on her with his hand clamped on the vehicle’s horn. 

As played here with an iron will and a take-charge attitude by British actress Ruth Madeley, Judy is a tenacious figure with uncommon gumption. But all the pluck and determination etched across her face don’t obscure the point of the opening sequence — to encapsulate the enormous challenges faced by people with disabilities in places with inadequate concern for accessibility.

The first feature from director Siân Heder since her coming-of-age drama CODA went all the way from Sundance to a best picture win at the 2022 Oscars, Being Heumann follows a similar inspirational playbook, albeit lifted from a chapter in the American civil rights annals rather than drawing on real-life experiences to craft a fictional narrative. As with CODA, in which Heder cast deaf actors as deaf characters, the new film’s winning hand is the use of actors with disabilities to play the ragtag coalition led by Heumann in 1977 in what became the longest occupation of a federal building in U.S. history.

Previously covered in the Oscar-nominated 2020 documentary Crip Camp, the 504 sit-in took its name from that section of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the first U.S. federal civil rights protection for people with disabilities. Given that four years had passed since the signing of the bill but zero government action had been taken to put it into practice, Heumann spontaneously led a large group of fellow protesters when she stormed the San Francisco office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The sit-in lasted an unprecedented 28 days.

People who have seen Crip Camp might not gain a ton of new insights here, but Heder and co-writer Rebekah Taussig deserve credit for telling the story in an easily digestible, emotionally effective way that stands to reach a wider audience when it debuts Nov. 13 on Apple TV, after opening a week earlier in theaters.

Even if it sometimes has the feel of an old-school issues-driven TV movie, Being Heumann asks and answers questions that remain amply relevant today, about whether protests and collective action still matter. Where it will be most illuminating is in opening the public’s eyes to the basic human rights systematically denied people with disabilities before legal protections were put in place. The Trump administration’s efforts to weaken those protections adds timeliness to Heder’s film.

The depiction of courage, commitment and cooperation is stirring stuff, with people from across the disability spectrum — blind and deaf Americans as well as wheelchair users — overcoming heated in-fighting and political bullying tactics, banding together to galvanize change that would benefit millions.

Some of the most moving sections are the testimonies of the activists when they finally get face time with government reps, detailing the years in which they were denied schooling and declined jobs for which they were eminently qualified. Perhaps the saddest note is the mention of countless people with no access to assistance, ensuring their invisibility by keeping them confined to their homes.

The chief antagonist standing in the way of long-delayed regulations is HEW Secretary Joseph Califano (Mark Ruffalo, doing a somewhat buffoonish impersonation), who argued that the $2.4 billion in taxpayer dollars it would take to implement the regulations required a more extensive review. On the supportive side is Democratic Congressman George Miller (Rob Delaney) and local TV news reporter Evan White (Dylan O’Brien), whose coverage gets picked up by national news networks, much of it filmed while he is embedded with activists in the occupied San Francisco building. Both Delaney and O’Brien sport fabulous ‘70s staches the size of caterpillars.

Heder and Taussig are careful not to make Miller and White — and ultimately Califano when he caves in to pressure and signs — into ableist saviors. The backbone of the film is very clearly the coalition led by Heumann, who frequently rubs fellow activists the wrong way — “I’m not an asshole. I’m just from Brooklyn,” she protests at one point — but is fully acknowledged as the driving force they need.

Among the key people involved in the occupation is Kitty Cone (Madeline Delp), whose insistence on civility prompts Judy to call her a Pollyanna; their friendship evolves in fits and starts with a lovely payoff in the closing scenes.

Antwan Tolliver has strong moments as Brad Lomax, a member of the Black Panthers with multiple sclerosis, who calls in reinforcements from the party to deliver food in a memorable scene. And Andrew Pilkington injects welcome humor into his portrayal of Hale Zukas, a pioneer in the Berkeley movement for independent living, who communicates with a pointer antenna attached to his head and an alphabet board — these were the days before smart tablets. “Disability is not a tragedy,” Hale writes, putting a key theme into words. “It’s a tremendous hassle.”

Among the allies, handsome military vet Jim Pechin (Jon Beavers) and out-and-proud lesbian Joni Breves (Roberta Colindrez) make warm impressions, both of them attracted to Judy’s “radical crip” energy. It’s a little obvious, but lobbing in the raucous Ramones classic “Judy Is a Punk” gives an extra kick to a breakthrough moment, and the wonderful Madeley earns it.

The dramatic momentum flags a little as the sit-in goes from days to weeks and the film nudges past the two-hour mark. But the characters and the disabled actors playing them are so engaging in their unbroken perseverance and their levity even in the face of harsh setbacks — a late-night raid by cops is especially hair-raising — that it’s impossible not to keep rooting for them. Their irrepressible joy is a tonic, and every sit-in should have a “sex tent” made of protest banners and American flags.

While the title of Being Heumann is a reference to disability rights activist Judy Heumann’s tireless efforts in legislating accessibility, the biopic is better viewed as an ensemble piece that captures the entire movement she championed.

In writer/director Siân Heder’s followup to her 2021 Oscar winner Coda, she recounts the 28-day occupation of San Francisco’s federal building, led by Heumann (Ruth Madeley), as she and a group of activists demanded the signing of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and its Section 504, which banned discrimination against people with disabilities in government-funded institutions, more than a decade before the ADA was signed into law.

Despite its somewhat excessive two-hour runtime—perhaps prudent to capture the sit-in’s grueling length—the movie doesn’t spend much time going into Heumann’s backstory. But Madeley, who was born with spina bifida, plays her with a fearless determination and passion that would make the real Heumann proud.

Meanwhile, as the onscreen Heumann learns to release some control of the movement and the ongoing sit-in, the film explores the backstories of some of this talented ensemble of disabled characters, each contributing to the film’s humorous and touching heartbeat.

The ensemble includes Antwan Tolliver as Black Panther and disability rights advocate Brad Lomax, whose past gets some attention as he brings together two movements. Madeline Delp plays fellow leader Kitty Cone, whose selfless compassion challenges Heumann’s radical approach to the movement. Charlie Rush-Reese gives a heartfelt performance as a new activist who finds his voice throughout the film.

Also part of the cast is Dylan O’Brien as KGO-TV reporter Evan White, whose ableist experience is shaken when he decides to embed himself in the sit-in, ultimately helping them take their fight to Washington DC. Roberta Colindrez plays Heumann’s confidant and fellow activist Joni Breves, who serves as her caregiver at times and ultimately uses her able privilege to help care for the other protesters throughout the sit-in. Jon Beavers provides chemistry as an able-bodied romantic opposite for Heumann, who is fine with her taking control.

Starring as Joseph Califano, secretary of health, education and welfare, Mark Ruffalo brings an exhausted stubbornness to the bureaucrat that remains resistant to change after ending up in an impossible position with his new office, five years into the passage of the Rehabilitation Act, which has still not been signed into law. It’s an interesting part for Ruffalo, given the actor’s own ongoing fights against the same U.S. government, a reminder that the struggle for civil rights still exists for many Americans.

Not only does the film capture these stories with enormous compassion, but it humanizes people with disabilities in ways that many projects fail to do while depicting the experience as either tragedy or inspiration porn. It shows the intimacy and trust that goes into caregiving, it shows that disabled people are as sexual as anyone else, and it shows what it feels like being seen as invisible by society.

While they fight for change on a federal level, it’s satisfying to watch them enforce change themselves, essentially making the building ADA compliant during their month-long residency. And as the cops try to arrest them, only to realize their own jails aren’t accessible, the film expresses perfectly how the government trips over its own feet while resisting inevitable change.

As disabled people, Heumann notes they belong to “a minority anyone could become part of,” something also demonstrated in a cleverly karmic moment for Califano as he attempts to evade protesters.

While Being Heumann leaves a little to be desired in regards to Heumann’s backstory, this movie spotlights the humanity in herself and many of her fellow activists, capturing a movement thats impact is everywhere today, and highlighting the power of intersectionality and collective action.

Title: Being Heumann
Festival: TIFF
Section: Gala Presentations
Director: Siân Heder
Screenwriter: Siân Heder, Rebekah Taussig
Cast: Ruth Madeley, Madeline Delp, Mark Ruffalo, Dylan O’Brien, Rob Delaney, Daniel Durant, Roberta Colindrez, Antwan Tolliver, Jon Beavers, Ray Fisher, Andrew Pilkington, Michael Patrick Thornton, Russell Harvard, Charlie Rush-Reese, Rio Finnegan, D’Arcee Charrington Neal, Will Brill, Matthew August Jeffers, Sienna Rafter, Rein Barcel
US Distributor: Apple Original Films
Running time: 2 hrs 7 mins