On his first visit ever to Chennai, renowned actor, director and theatre artist of the Hindi and Marathi industries Makrand Deshpande is thrilled. Says Makrand, “The first thing I did was have idlis at Saravana Bhavan! I’ve heard a lot about Chennai. CSK is from here and so is Rajinikanth. I am a huge fan of Rajini. He is the ultimate! I would love to meet him one day. I am happy that I am doing my first Tamil film Karimedu.”
The actor admits he was concentrating more on his Theatre group Ansh and not so much on films. But now things have changed, “Now that I’ve made an entry, I’d love to do more Tamil films. I’ve watched Mani Ratnam’s films and Vikram’s latest movie David recently.” The man who is known for his quirky characters in films like Sarfarosh, Swades, Makdee and others, has done two films each in Telugu and Malayalam and Dandupalayam in Kannada. The latter, which has released as Karimedu in Tamil, has Makrand playing the lead as a dreaded gangster Krishna, in this true to life movie. The experience was stressful. “I had to bring out the rakshas (demon) in me. The one year we shot was the most distressing since I had to play ‘the father of all bad men’ Krishna, who has done 132 murders and enjoys slitting throats and committing atrocities on women,” he concludes.