I ain’t going anywhere: Parvathy Thiruvothu on completing two decades in cinema

This would sound extremely boastful, but she did everything quite right. She is quite something.

I am grateful for the kind of people I was introduced to at the age of 17. Those conversations were very different than the conversations I heard other people having in the industry circles. To just give you a longer answer to the point is that she had the right influences. She had people with whom the conversations weren’t about how to be relevant, how to look a certain way, how to dominate the industry or how to make X amount of money.

Instead, the conversations were, what is the kind of art you want to make? What is the kind of artiste you want to be? How does this serve you? Why do you want to be an actor? How does it improve your quality of life by being an actor? Does the negatives of the industry still not affect you enough or the craft inspire you enough to stay in this space? etc. There is a core set of questions that I still ask myself 20 years later, and they have become my sort of touchstone. 

And it’s never taken for granted. So I think Parvathy at 17, 18, and 19 did a fantastic job, whether knowingly or unknowingly, to choose herself and her peace of mind and her value system beyond chasing relevance. And eventually, when that relevance per industry standard came to her, it did not throw her off balance.

So if anything, I look up to her right now for more advice than anything else. She’s also more ba**sy than I am now, I would say.

Storm came in like a storm. I remember getting this offer. And I had to read lines and scenes for

the director. I was so excited about this reading. It felt so amazing to sit down with Ajitpal Singh, the director, and discuss the character with just one scene or two scenes being given to me. I seem to have understood this girl so well, so quickly that I even attached a song as a soundtrack to her before I reached the office. And I started speaking to him about this character as if we both were like school classmates.

Post the reading, ‘I was like, if I don’t get this role, I will be devastated. Because I know how good I can be at this. But then it was a painful, stormy five months before everything started. It was a nailbiting experience to keep waiting to see whether I will get this role or not. A day after the reading, the HRX team—Eshaan Roshan, Ajitpal Singh and Hrithik Roshan—called me and said, “You are playing the character—we just have a couple of things to figure out.” And I don’t think I’ve felt that kind of happiness so quickly after a reading or an audition. It was extremely validating for me to hear that from them.

But once the shoot started, we were all on our mark—it was an amazing team and a great shooting environment. The character is pretty much of a beautiful mess. And I got a great chance to embody her. It was a lot of fun.

For me, so many things are on the right side of things. HRX is producing a film with Amazon Prime, and it has five women in the lead. I’m like, get out of town. The script is fantastic. The way the roles are written are superbly nuanced. And these are not characters who are just written on the page, and we just mug up and play it out. These are characters on set that will become ours. And Ajit would allow you to run with it. These scripts are like finding unicorns in the industry.

Oh, I wish I could tell you to expect me in comedies, but not yet. That is still a desire unfulfilled. However, I am manifesting it. But apart from that, I am playing a cop for the first time in Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar, which is a film directed by Shahad (Nilambur). And he is phenomenal. The movie is phenomenal. We just have a few more days of shoot left, but mostly done.

I also got to work with the most amazing director, Don Palathara. That was a completely different experience. The name of the movie cannot be divulged, unfortunately, because the announcement hasn’t happened. It has Dileesh Pothan. Again, a director I truly respect, but who continues to blow my mind as an actor as well. 

I also have I, nobody. I don’t think people would have seen me and Prithvi (Prithviraj Sukumaran) with such chemistry before. It’s a fantastic film. Nissam Basheer directed it, and I had a really great time.

I feel it’s the whole thing about what COVID did for us. Like all the many mad-bad things that happened in the industry, it kind of collapsed a certain wall. It collapsed the wall of accessibility. So OTT boomed, and because you couldn’t step out, suddenly Malayalam films were like raved in circles and talked about and everything.

I still believe that the kind of distribution Malayalam films get—unless they’re supremely high-budget—is not a fair space. I feel regional cinema, in general, should have a certain standard of theatres and exhibition spaces in other cities—ensuring subtitles and accessibility, and that films are screened in prime centres. That still doesn’t really happen much for Malayalam films, I think. So I feel the recognition and the critical acclaim is hardly news, because we do create amazing films. And we have great audience who always call out if we start making substandard stuff. That’s one thing that we can always rely on.

We have a solid and an extremely robust audience system that is a feedback machinery for us. We can’t sidestep that. But that said, what I would want for Malayalam cinema is to have the kind of representation in the distribution and exhibition spaces that is not yet there.

I do see a lot of micro changes. I wouldn't say there are macro changes yet, because the reason the collective was formed was not just to bring about awareness. We are also an advocacy group.

We didn't sign up for this. We are all people who are industry professionals, who wanted to just do their jobs. But it got to a point where we couldn't shut our eyes towards the injustices that existed in our own workspace.

So instead of just talking about it, we decided we do something about it. And the doing did not mean that we would exclude people or we want to take away people's opportunities. We just wanted a dignified, equal, and fair workplace. And we didn't realise that asking for that is going to be such a big fight, especially considering Kerala is so revered for its literacy rate, awareness, and progressiveness.

That has been quite a journey for all of us. People often forget that we are still professionals trying to do a job. We are not activists who took this up because this was our primary requirement. We are people who decided that, okay, it's our house, I guess we have to all collectively clean it.

We have turned a blind eye for as long as we could, but we can't do that anymore, because this could happen to anybody. And how long will we keep quiet? So I do see micro micro changes in places in productions where they initiate internal committee and conversations. I also see posters and zero tolerance policies on site. However, I do feel like majority of the production houses are still not doing, which is probably a very mandatory thing for them to do, but they're still not on it.

And we still don't have the three Ps that we keep talking about—prevention, prohibition, and punishment, out of which the prevention part of it can only come if the government and film groups within the industry would put their heads together and create a policy and regulatory body so that there is something that is overseeing and governing and there is a grievance cell outside so that there is nothing that can influence it. Basically a law, a legal system that will help us do our jobs better and stay safe.

So unfortunately, it's kind of like two steps forward, one step back kind of a situation, because as long as WCC might be doing something, putting something out, then you have to make up for the union fights that we have seen, it not going places. And so there's a lot of work to do. Policies have to be put in place. This has to be taken much more seriously by the government and the other union bodies of the film industry. But as long as we're not stopping, I would call it progress.

I feel it changes every few years. I used to be leaning towards a certain kind of character prep, which is basically knowing her backstory, what is written in the screenplay etc. I take everything from that. And if there are gaps or areas I don’t fully see, I’ll ask the writer or director: what do you think this was in her life? What do you think this is for her? Then I build her entire biography, so to speak, right up to the moment she appears in the film.

So that’s still intact for me—I love that process. I want to know the socioeconomic space her parents came from, where she studied (or didn’t), what her economic background is, what her political views are, even what kind of food makes her gassy—details that might seem unnecessary. But everything is deeply subcutaneous; these things help me forget myself more easily, stay on the periphery, and invite a whole new person into my mind space.

That’s what I do. But this has also changed in some cases. For example, in Ullozhukku, I did all of this and then I had to throw all of it out of the window. None of that was an active toolkit I could draw from, because Urvashi chechi and I were thrown into the deep end every single day—every moment—figuring out what grief looked like. It was painful and scary; you think you have all these tools, but we had to learn from scratch how to be these people. So I have an immense amount of systems and ideas and methodologies in place, but some times none of them may work and you just have to do a trust fall with the director. So I’ve also gone through that.

You should ex-pect me everywhere, frankly (laughs). Okay, I am ambitious as hell and I ain’t going anywhere. It’s been 20 years. Clearly, people are not able to get rid of me. But nothing is solid right now in Tamil as a project.

But here’s the thing. I also want to take it as sustainably as possible going forward. In that respect, maybe the age is catching up on me.

But I feel I’m in a good spot right now with the kind of films I’ve done. For instance, Chennaiyil Oru Naal took a long time to come my way, then Maryan happened a long time after that. It was the same case with Thangalaan. So it may take a couple of years, but I don’t mind as long as it kind of gives me the sort of satisfaction it eventually does.

I have two wonderful therapists. And I go to the gym regularly, against my 19-year-old self.  I mean, she would be amazed at me in this respect.

Because probably the influence she had around that time about mental health and physical fitness was, “it’s not required, suffering is important,” etc. The suffering artiste syndrome was pretty much glorified in many circles that I met when I was much younger. They used to be like, “oh, the more you suffer internally, the better an actor you will be” etc. But eventually, I realised the more I regulate myself, the better the actor I am. 

So I am very diligent with my therapy and my workout, and communication with people in my life. That’s what keeps me quite solid these days.

So usually birthdays and Vishu are always a mom and dad-family situation for me. If I’m not with my family, I’m not celebrating Vishu.But this year, it is going to be a little different because I now have a place in Mumbai, and I’m working there. So maybe I will do something special.

Even last year, I did something very strange. I keep surprising myself. I did something for Diwali at home, just for the heck of it. And I can’t remember the last time I even celebrated Diwali. It’s when my parents and I were in Delhi that we used to celebrate. So this is an exciting thing, for me to plan something in Mumbai for Vishu.

But at the same time, for the real Vishu, I’m mostly with my family. The idea of my dad waking me up at four in the morning, closing my eyes, and leading me to see the kani is a core memory I won’t miss.