“I love all your movies....” says an excited fan as he holds the mic and looks straight into his favourite hero, a smiling Nivin Pauly, the popular Malayalam actor who has a big fan base in Tamil Nadu. Seated in a chair, dressed in a black shirt and blue jeans, and a black cap , Nivin Pauly speaks to his fans at the Brookefields Mall about Richie , his first full-length Tamil movie. Sitting pretty next to him is Shraddha Srinath, the heroine of the film dressed in green and purple.
The same fan requests Nivin to “perform a dialogue from any Tamil movie.” He obliges to thunderous applause with ,“ Idhu rendu kulanidhaligaloda padam, dash and dash dash ...” from his gangster movie Richie. Two middle-aged women ask him about his son and Nivin laughs and responds, “He is just five years. Let him finish his studies first.”
“Maddy ( Actor Madhavan) or Nivin Pauly, who is a better co-actor?” came the next question to Shraddha, whose last Tamil film Vikram Vedha with actor Madhavan was a big hit. She plays a journalist in Richie . “I should work with Nivin Pauly in another film to answer that question. We have only a small scene together in Richie and it was shot in just about three hours…all I could say is ‘Hi and Hello, nice to meet you’.” But she confesses that it was a humbling moment to share a screen space with “the person whose acting I admire a lot.”
Nivin says meeting his fans in Tamil Nadu has been overwhelming. “I want to do more films in Tamil. In Kerala, we watch all Tamil films. It’s big celebration time for us whenever a Tamil movie releases.” About his upcoming films in Malayalam, he says Kayamkulam Kochunni , based on the real story of a Robin Hood of Kayamkulam, is a period film. It is directed by Roshan Andrews, of the popular Tamil film 36 Vayadhiniley . “I had to work on my dialogues to get the Kayamkulam accent right. I am also looking forward to director Shyama Prasad’s movie Hey Jude which was shot entirely in Goa.”
But it is Moothon directed by Geetu Mohandas in Malayalam and Hindi that is his big project which also marks his debut in Bollywood. “I speak Malayalam and a language spoken by the people of Lakshadweep. The Hindi dialogues are written by Anurag Kashyap.”
About working with women directors, Geethu Mohandas now and Anjali Menon, with whom he worked in the blockbuster Malayalam film Banglaore Days , Nivin says, “They give you the creative space to bring out your best emotions to the scene.”
Acting in films outside one’s own state provides an opportunity to actors to experiment and build a wider fan base, says Nivin. Shraddha adds, “Heroines have always done films in multi-languages. It comes with a different set of challenges as it takes more time to warm up to a new audience.”
The session winds up with a flurry of selfie requests with Nivin.
