The struggling copywriter forced to undergo a life-changing road trip in Shreelancer. The narcissistic South Indian hitman with relationship problems in Popcity. The vulnerable hostage collector caught off-guard in Pada. Tovino Thomas’ disappointed buddy in Dear Friend. Amitabh Bachchan’s supportive son in Jhund. APJ Abdul Kalam in Rocket Boys. Finally, Mammootty’s psychotic antagonist in Kannur Squad.
For someone who has to do some disturbingly unpleasant things in Kannur Squad, Arjun Radhakrishnan reveals himself to be someone not good at handling certain kinds of violence. “Oddly enough, I can watch a film like Inglourious Basterds, but I flinch when I see Mammukka using the third degree on a suspect in the film,” he laughs. “That pin... man.”
An actor who, up until now, was predominantly seen in non-commercial fare, Arjun found the limelight diameter slightly expanding after his villainous turn in Kannur Squad, which required him to put his fluent Hindi to good use—to masquerade as the leader of a North Indian gang to mislead the police.
Sure, the 37-year-old has become relatively more “high profile” since his last film, but Arjun is cautious about fame getting to his head. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that he is a late bloomer. “Maybe it’s because I got it at age 37 and not 27 that makes a difference,” he observes. “It’s not like I waited for fame, but it took me a long way to get a big film. I guess as you get older, you deal with these things better. Also, I think getting attention is very different from attaining fame. When Pada or Rocket Boys came out, people said good things about my acting; that attention is not the shirt-ripping kind.”
With no previous industry connections, Arjun, too, has had his share of struggles. However, he remembers his journey as relatively less challenging. “I found that in Mumbai, people have been, by and large, very nice to me. I’ve been at auditions where I got rejected, but then someone would notice me and say, ‘He’s a good actor; let’s try him out.’ But I won’t deny that after a point, the frustration gets to you, and you think, ‘F*** this! Give me the role, man!’ Thankfully, I got to meet the good side of the industry. And you know what? I don’t think people talk about how luck is also an important factor. I mean, look, everyone’s got talent; everyone is working hard. But how many of them make it?”
Arjun caught cinematographer-turned-director Roby Varghese Raj’s attention after the latter saw him in Pada and Dear Friend. “The idea was to get all these actors in Kannur Squad to do something different from what they’ve done before,” says Roby. “In the case of Arjun, for example, it was about making him do a character that was the opposite of what he played in Pada.”
Further encouragement for Arjun came in the form of two words: Mammootty Kampany. “When I heard Mammukka himself was producing it, I breathed a sigh of relief because, obviously, he sensed some potential in it,” says Arjun, whose performance impressively treads the thin line between raw and over-the-top, an approach that worked to his advantage. He recalls feeling strange when he found out that his character would have an entry and background music. “I didn’t expect all that. Since I’ve not done these kinds of films before, I lacked the imagination to think like that. Besides, Roby was quite adept at handling certain sequences because I guess some cinematographers-turned-directors usually learn from mistakes they made when working with some filmmakers whose approach may have been disagreeable and are careful about not repeating them. In the case of Kannur Squad, both Roby and Rony (actor-writer) knew what to omit and keep. That dark flashback, for instance, was well-choreographed and classily shot.”
Further elaborating on the approach of brothers Roby and Rony, Arjun says the former is “simple and straightforward” with his inputs. Rony, on the other hand, “demanded a slightly heightened intensity” from Arjun’s performance.
“They made it clear from the outset that there is a sense of brutality to the things my character Ameer Shah does. Roby basically came to me and said, ‘I know how you are a person, so you do what’s best according to you. Rony said that I should yell and all that. So I just went and did what I could. Since this is a commercial film, I knew there would be a different tone, and both their inputs were interesting because they reflected their personalities. Roby is more of an introverted, soft-spoken guy who didn’t want me to do anything I was uncomfortable with. Rony is more extroverted, and in the end, he was surprised at what I did. A couple of my lines had cuss words, but they had to mute them to make it palatable for family audiences.”
Arjun, who fetched plaudits for his charismatic portrayal of APJ Abdul Kalam in the SonyLIV series Rocket Boys, is in the midst of filming another long-form series, this time in Malayalam. Titled Blindfold, it marks the directorial debut of Anzarulla, a former associate of filmmaker Samir Thahir, and has a script by Harshad (Unda, Puzhu). Arjun is sharing the screen with Lijomol Jose (Jai Bhim, Maheshinte Prathikaram). Aside from Blindfold, Arjun will appear in Christo Tomy’s Ullozhukku, co-starring Parvathy Thiruvoth and Urvashi.
Echoing the sentiments of many actors who find more space for character development in long-form storytelling, Arjun says he had initially yearned to be a “film actor” but is no longer bothered about the format. “As long as it has strong performance potential, I welcome it. I got most of these wonderful opportunities post-pandemic and have many series-format stories pitched to me. The only difference between Blindfold and Rocket Boys is that the former is shot like a feature film, whereas they adopted a proper long-form approach for the latter. Blindfold has a heavy subject, and splitting it into half-hour episodes (8 episodes total) makes it easier for Kerala audiences.”