Soul-searching for Sundeep Kishan

The go-to actor for off beat roles, Sundeep Kishan is set for another phase

This year has been a mixed bag for Sundeep Kishan — he had faced a disaster in the form of Nakshatram at the box office but was immediately flooded with interesting scripts, so he recovered quite quickly. Samanthakamani starring multiple heroes was a hit and Maanagaram did fairly well in Telugu and Tamil. There was a time when this talented and young actor had a string of hits and every filmmaker who wanted to try novel stories queued up outside his door but sadly he was not able to consolidate his position. Sundeep analyses, “I was experimenting with young directors with interesting scripts and tried going on commercial route. Joru and Oka Ammayi Tappa failed. Also, Krishna Vamsi put his life and soul into Nakshatram but it didn’t connect with the audience. I thought the only way to grow was in a commercial format, but then I realised that’s not right. I have experimented with both characters and scripts. Now I am experimenting with established film makers…Krishna Vamsi, Manjula, Karthick Naren, Kunal Kohli and Suseenthiran.”

The actor says he is glad things didn’t go in his stride, as a result of which he could do some soul searching. He says, “A film takes around six months to get ready and in that space there will be lot of changes... we won’t know what the audience wants. The industry is changing and so is audience’s tasteIt is a beautiful place to be in, it wasn’t like this five years ago.”

His Tamil film

Maayavan (dubbed as

Project Z in Telugu) directed by C V Kumar is coming up for release. It is an investigative thriller wherein Sundeep plays a cop. Manjula’s film will remind one of urban rom com. Then there is Kunal Kohli-directed Telugu film film with Tamannaah, loosely based on

Hum Tum . In Karthick Naren’s Tamil film

Naragasooran (

Narakasurudu in Telugu), he is the hero and shares space with Arvind Swamy, Indrajit and Shriya. It is thriller with a horror element.

Is Sundeep game to playing negative roles like he did in

Prasthanam ? “There is a small negative tinge to my role in Naragasooran (Tamil), I am in an interesting space. All my films right now are closer to reality, none of them have taken cinematic liberties. It is a slice of life. People think of me as a guy who can do varied stuff and can pull it off.”

Sundeep Kishan (right) and Mehreen

His next release is

C/O Surya directed by Suseenthiran. The director had wanted to work with Sundeep for a long time, he had even roped him in a bilingual but the logistics didn’t work out for the Telugu version so the script was kept aside. When Suseenthiran was looking for a hero with good timing, a flair for humour and can work out emotions, Sundeep seemed the apt choice, especially as he was fluent in both the languages. So Sundeep came on board with Mehreen as his co-star. Explaining the title ‘C/O Surya’ he says, “His name is Surya and he is very close to his friends. When you introduce someone in a group, you always say that he is a particular guy’s friend. That is his c/o address. This is the first time I am doing a bi-lingual. The director has credibility having done a film in Telugu too. The film has a middle class set up, none of the characters are comedians per se in the film but their characters are funny.”

The Telugu version is set in Visakhapatnam, and was shot around 25 days there. A normal person takes on a problem and solves it and that is what the Tamil title Aram Seidhu Pazhagu means in Telugu — Gundello dhairyam untey.