With Sharan’s upcoming film Raja Rajendra being classified as a pure entertainer, director Pon Kumar has decided to give it that extra zing by introducing a host of comedians to the cast. “When I was working with Sharan in his previous film, Jayalalitha, I understood his talent and capabilities and narrated the script of Raja Rajendra to him. He really liked the story and even brought in Uday Mehta as the producer of the film. The movie required a lot of comic characters and for comedy to be effective with the audience, it needs to be performed by good artistes. So, I took Ramakrishna, a senior actor, as well as Ravi Shankar who is a villain but portrayed in a comical way. The other members of the cast include Sadhu Kokila, Tabla Nani and Kuri Prathap who make a good combination,” says Kumar.
Kumar believes that he is a very strict director and quite dominating on the sets. However he thoroughly enjoyed working on Raja Rajendra because of the cast of seasoned and talented good actors. “Directing Raja Rajendra was like a cakewalk as I had actors who are veterans and only want to improve their performance with every role that they take on. They are used to developing the characters and giving their own trademark style and punch. All I needed to do was push them in the right direction,” he says.
Kumar manages to end the film with laughter by bringing in almost all the actors of the film together in a single scene which goes on for ten minutes. “Apart from Sharan, Ravi Shankar and the comedians, I also have Lakshmi Siddhaiah, Rekha, Archana, Suchendra Prasad among the 15 actors who will share screen space for that scene. I took half a day to narrate the scenes for this 10-minute climax and we rehearsed it several times before we took the final shot. It uses situational comedy, which works well throughout the film,” he says.
The highlight of the film is Sharan’s double role as Bottlemani, a comic hero and a larger-than-life character who appears for about 10 minutes in a flashback sequence. “This short role sees Sharan playing a mass hero which was quite a challenge. Sharan who has always made people laugh with his humour in his real and reel avatars, did not know that this trait would make it hard for him to play a historical king. He was very disciplined and dedicated a lot of himself to do justice to his role,” says Kumar.