In last year’s sleeper hit Nedunchalai , she played Manga, a fiercely independent girl who runs a dhaba that caters to truck drivers. While the character was originally intended to be that of a Tamil girl, it was tweaked to suit her Malayali accent as she dubbed in her own voice. Sshivada says it took her over six months to understand the complex characterisation and what resulted was a treat to watch… especially since it is rare to see a female character shoulder a film.
But it wasn’t effortless, insists the actress who made her Tamil debut with the film. “Some scenes required 10 to 12 takes to achieve perfection,” she says, adding, “Sometimes, doing a tough scene felt like a breeze, but I struggled with simpler ones. Krishna sir (the director) had this unique way of extracting several variations from us for a particular shot without making us feel bad. Also, when there are actors such as Thambi Ramaiah and Salim Kumar on the sets, who not only learn their lines but also those of the others, we need to be alert so that we can respond to their instant improvisations. It’s these little challenges that make me fall in love with the craft.”
Sshivada was spotted by the legendary Malayalam director Fazil, who introduced her in his film Living Together . “I was a VJ before that and was focussing on my dance, but never thought I would get into acting. But who would pass up an opportunity to work with a name like Fazil sir? After that, I wanted to go slow. I then auditioned for a role in Nedunchalai, which I knew as being the second film of the director who had made Sillunu Oru Kadhal . A great character, I just couldn’t turn it down,” she says.
What’s up next? In Zero , directed by debutant Shiv Mohaa, a former assistant of Bharat Bala, she plays a conservative housewife. But at the risk of repeating a cliché, she says the film will be unlike any other Tamil film we’ve seen before. “The film has been shot in a unique way. For instance, when shooting a serious scene, the director would play a song on the set to have the whole crew feel as he did about it. He would never act out a scene like my earlier directors did; he would also have eight to ten references for each scene and expression,” she says, cautious not to divulge anything about the storyline.
