CHENNAI: In 'Madgaon Express', three childhood friends dream of making a trip to Goa. During school, the parents don’t give them permission and in college, as they make an impulsive decision to just drive away to the place, things go south; they end up in the hospital instead. Soon, their life takes a different path and while two of them go abroad for further studies, the third one, Dodo, is stuck in the same place. Played by Divyenndu with a manic energy, Dodo is the craziest of the three. “Dodo is such a mad hatter. Whatever he does is just so bizarre, and how he sees life was a revelation to me,” says Divyenndu. However, the trip finally happens and it turns out to be their biggest nightmare, as they get stuck in the middle of stolen drugs, gang war and cops. “I think no one has ever experienced Goa like that,” says the Mirzapur actor. “And I don’t want anyone to have that experience either.”
Speaking of mad experiences, Dodo wears a saree later in the film, as he sneaks into the den of the dreaded Kombdi Gang which is full of fisherwomen involved in trading drugs. For Divyenddu, getting into the womanly attire was one of the major highlights. “I really enjoyed being in the Kombdi look,” he says.
"It was the first time I was doing something like that, you know, playing a woman on screen. And what made it even more enjoyable was the kind of situation we were in. There’s a lot of confusion, chaos and action in that kind of attire, and setup. The madness goes to a different level when you see us, going there dressed as women.” For Divyenndu, who rose to prominence with his role as the frustrated IT employee Nishant aka “Liquid” in the buddy film 'Pyaar Ka Punchnama' (2011), going back to comedy was a huge relief.
He is known for playing the dreaded gangster, Munna in the crime thriller series Mirzapur (2018) and he was last seen in the Netflix miniseries, 'The Railway Men' (2023). “I was waiting to do a comedy for a while now because I was doing quite a lot of dark projects lately and I wanted to do something else,” he says. “So, when Madgaon Express came to me, it was a perfect opportunity. I read the script and found that it had genuine situational comedy and not just a bunch of jokes put together.” Divyenndu, however, finds serious films to be his first calling. He also feels that comedy involves a lot of hard work. “I feel that doing intense characters is much more in my zone. It comes naturally to me,” he says.
“When it comes to comedies, there’s a lot of hard work you have to put in. There is nothing that can save you, be it the camera movement, background score or dingy lighting. You go out there to perform and you are naked in front of the camera. If you have that timing, your joke lands, if you don’t, it will run flat.”
Along with that, he says it is important for the co-actors to have the same kind of energy for it to really register as funny. “It takes a lot of homework to understand the meter in which the lines are written. Moreover, your co-actors also need to be on the same page,” the actor says. “It’s a symphony at the end of the day, so everyone has to be really sure what notes they are playing. Otherwise, that symphony can very well be a cacophony in a matter of time. That’s why I take comedy very seriously.”
There are other challenges that come during the filming process as well. Reflecting on the experience of working on Madgaon Express, he adds, “When you are filming a comedy, it’s not always just one shot. Even if you give a great first take, there are always different angles to capture the same thing. So, to recreate that every time from different angles is a challenge.”
However, according to Divyenndu first-time director Kunal Kemmu made the shooting process easier and without any hassles. “He was just so well prepared for the film that it was a really good feeling,” he says. “For a first-time director, he had absolutely no jitters, he knew what he wanted, and to do that in a comedy is not easy,” he signs off.