Diverse roles help you stay relevant: R Madhavan

He says that he chooses scripts based on what he is going through in his life at that point in time.
R Madhavan
R Madhavan
Updated on
4 min read

In the recently released comedy-drama Hisaab Barabar, R Madhavan plays Radhe Shyam, a sincere ticket checker in the Indian railways, who is obsessed with mathematics and numbers. He wants his accounts to be clear and his finances to be settled. So much so that when he sees a discrepancy of just Rs 27 in his bank account, Radhe rushes to the bank with a written complaint. In real life, however, Madhavan is not so good at maintaining his finances. Instead, his wife takes the lead in managing it. “I only get pocket money to spend every month,” he smiles.

To play such a character, the actor had to change his body language. “I had to get rid of all the heroism in my body language for the film,” he says, adding, “I started thinking like my father to deliver the lines.” His presence in the film is filled with a certain simplicity and charm.

“For the role, I had to learn how it felt before I came into the industry where I was nervous about everything,” he adds. The actor’s selection of scripts in the last few years has been strikingly varied. From a railway manager reacting to a gas tragedy in The Railway Men (2023) to playing a red-eyed devil in Ajay Devgn’s Shaitaan last year, Madhavan has been incorporating a distinct style with each project. He says that he chooses scripts based on what he is going through in his life at that point in time.

“Sometimes, there is one scene in the script which I imagine myself doing. That becomes like a pivotal scene around which I tend to build the whole film. But there are also those occasions when none of this happens after reading the entire script,” he says.

It is important for him to relate with the character and the world of the film before agreeing to take it up. “If the film has a potential for me to make a homogenous character out of it, then I tend to do it,” he adds. When asked if it is also important for him to know the people he is working with for a project, Madhavan says, “No. For me, the bible is the script and the intent.”

Hisaab Barabar also stars Kirti Kulhari in the role of a cop and Neil Nitin Mukesh as a cunning business tycoon. Neil has earlier played negative roles right from his debut with Sriram Raghavan’s neo-noir thriller Johnny Gaddaar (2007) and later in films like Players (2012) and Wazir (2016). While doing such a role, he says that it becomes helpful to not see it as a villain but understand their multiple shades.

“Knowing the emotional core of the character is very important. Why is he like that? Is he a dark, dirty villain or has he got a human element to him?” he says. A scene in the climax of the film has him falling on a pile of cow dung and the actor was not comfortable doing it at first.

“I was afraid of what it might lead to in the age of social media memes and everything,” he says. However, it was the conviction of the director Ashwni Dhir that convinced him to eventually do it. “It completed the journey of the character as he was paying for what he did. That gave me his arc.”

The film was released directly on ZEE5 on January 24. For Kirti, who has worked in OTT shows and films earlier, her craft doesn’t change depending on the medium. However, she feels that a direct-to-OTT release comes with a less amount of pressure as there is no box-office collection involved. “Unfortunately, theatricals are judged from the perspective of how much money it has made. And that affects the kind of work you will get in future,” she says. “While on OTT, the film gets a fairer chance to be viewed and liked and disliked accordingly.”

Madhavan adds that a lot has changed since he first started out in the film industry when there were multiple avenues for a film to be released. He feels that the changing times have also brought a shift in how he approaches his work. “When I first started, if one film of yours was a hit, you could continue to make that kind of film for the next four years and still expect it to be a hit,” he says.

“It was a flavour of the season, but that is something you can’t afford to do now at all.” He says that he was able to do Tanu Weds Manu (2011) and Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015) consecutively back then, but now it is necessary to shift genres. “The era of comfort is gone completely. Now, it is important to do diverse roles to stay relevant,” he concludes.

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