How Vijay Sethupathi’s lockdown shoot came about

How will a busy actor juggling multiple projects be at home during the pandemic?

The first time photographer L Ramachandran called actor Vijay Sethupathi during this lockdown, the star was slightly upset.

“I am very dull now and staring at the walls of my house,” the actor told him.

“That’s what I want,” said the lensman.

A few days later, the actor arrived at Ramachandran’s studio and spent three hours... resulting in a photo series called ‘Human’. The concept was simple: how will a celebrity juggling multiple projects be at home during lockdown?

Unlike big-budget film shoots and promotional shoots, ‘Human’ tries to showcase the everyday nature of the star. “We did not want him to pose. We wanted him to be exactly like how he would be at home,” said Ramachandran.

The trigger for the series was another photo-series that Ramachandran was working on during lockdown: capturing Chennai’s famous monuments and places of religious worship, berefit of people due to the lockdown. “When I observed people on the streets, there was something different about them. They were speaking to themselves, muttering about how life had changed. That’s the kind of emotion that I wanted Vijay Sethupathi to exhibit... and he did that wonderfully.”

On the film front, Vijay Sethupathi has ‘Tughlaq Darbar’ coming up. The first look of this film, directed by Delhiprasad Deenadayal, was released recently. Meanwhile, the actor also awaits the release of several of his other films, the biggest among them being the Vijay-starrer ‘Master’.