Malvika Nair is just done with her first year BA exams and she hasn’t planned her summer vacation yet. She is waiting to wrap up her next film with Kalyan Dev and then go for a short vacation to her hometown in Kerala. Tell her that she has many similarities with Nithya Menen, be it her appearance or attitude and she is not bemused. She has heard that from people before. In a brief chat with Metro Plus , the actor talks about her projects Taxiwala and Mahanati .
Discussing her project with Kalyan Dev, she says, “I had very little interaction with Kalyan Dev. He is a nice person and he is putting in his best for the project. It’s a little early to divulge details about the film. I got to meet his wife Sreeja, she dropped by one day and she is such a sweetheart. The director has extreme clarity. Hyderabad has become my first home; I haven’t been to Kerala for really long. My days are packed; I return from college and study or go for my workout. My friends in college get curious and ask many things about the films I do but I tell them very little.”
Understanding Alamelu
The actor is more than happy to have been associated with director Nag Ashwin and producer Swapna Dutt, who gave her a break with Yevade Subramanyam . It didn’t matter to her that she was offered a small role in Mahanati and considers it an honour to be a part of the biopic that has several established actors.
Did she get to see any of Savitri’s films? She recollects, “I do not know anything about Mahanati Savitri. I did the film for Nag Ashwin, producers Priyanka and Swapna. The length of the role doesn’t bother me, I am glad that I am playing a part that is so different from who I am. Also, I have never played a housewife before. I am playing Alamelu, also called Babji, Gemini Ganesan’s first wife. There were two characters that Nagi was thinking for me, and was wondering which one would suit me… Jamuna or Alamelu. I knew this one (Alamelu) would be a lot more layered and tough; she goes through a lot of pain and still doesn’t break down. She was aware of what was going on in her husband’s life. There are scenes where she comes face to face with Savitri, there has to be a time when she has to talk to her. So to enact all that heavy stuff was challenging.”
Unflinching support
Malvika adds, “There are other scenes where I see them together and it rattles me, and I am with my kids. The character designed for Alamelu is more than just interesting. You cannot emotionally connect to Savitri, but you also get to know Alamelu’s side because of the sacrifices she has made and she still wants to support her husband. I honestly know very little about the characters. I have seen women struggling and trying hard to find their identity. At that time they had different levels of suppression to deal with. It is easy to ask why she didn’t leave him and why she couldn’t find someone else. It is hard to find your identity when you have been suppressed for so long. You require courage to get out of it.”
Malvika worked equally with both Dulquer Salmaan and Keerthy Suresh. She admits that she finds Dulquer handsome and recalls how almost everyone on the sets had a crush on him. She heaps praise on both her Malayalee co-stars, “Keerthy has done a really good job, I saw the pain in her eyes which Savitri might have gone through, maybe it is just a fraction of what Savitri felt, but she has done it wonderfully. I was so moved seeing the rushes while dubbing. I also saw the trailer, I am actually waiting to see the film and know what Savitri experienced. My curiosity is definitely piqued. Nagi was very happy and said I did the character well and at the end of the day, that is all an actor wants to hear.”
Ask her about Taxiwala and her co-star of her first film Vijay Deverakonda and Rahul Sankrityan, the director, and she says, “Rahul is one of those technicians who doesn’t talk much, my character is very relevant to the plot and I can’t talk much about it. It is definitely not a horror flick, my roles in both these films are like chalk and cheese... I am playing different ages and personalities. I just had one scene with Vijay, our plots are different. We hardly meet and it is all entwined into one story. I was happy when he was on the sets because it meant having one more friend around.”
