After being on stage for the better part of his life, city-based Bharatanatyam dancer Mithun Shyam has made his big screen debut with Chandramukhi 2, starring Kangana Ranaut, Raghava Lawrence, and Lakshmi Menon in principal roles. Shyam plays the role of Gunasekaran. “My character is the love interest of Kangana Ranaut, who plays the role of Chandramukhi. The movie primarily focuses on the story of Chandramukhi from 200 years ago, he says.
The city-based dancer admits that the role was overwhelming for him. “The team had not yet finalised who would be playing the role of Chandramukhi; they were still looking at various options. Then, as luck would have it, they told me that it was going to be me. I think it was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. To be able to share screen space with an actor of Kangana Ranaut’s calibre was too exciting for me,” says Shyam, adding, “She can easily be the most talented actor of today. The kind of work that she has done, from Fashion to Tanu Weds Manu and Queen; she is truly an incredible artiste.”
Irrespective of Ranaut’s public image of being unabashedly vocal, Shyam says that when it comes to her work, she is very professional. “She understood that I was a dancer, turning into characters when we were on stage. She explained to me how I am supposed to refer to the camera and told me, ‘I understand that you’re a dancer, but the way you do things is different here’. She didn’t have to coach me on acting because, after all, she is such a big actor; she could have told any of the assistant directors to do it, but she took the effort to do it herself,” recalls Shyam, who was not camera-conscious since he has performed for cultural programmes on Doordarshan.
Being an accomplished dancer himself, it was a conscious decision for him to not choreograph his parts. “National-award-winning choreographer Kala Master did the choreography. I thought it would be wrong on my part to overstep a senior choreographer like her. As a matter of fact, I took it as a learning opportunity,” he says, also mentioning that most of the shoot took place in Hyderabad and some parts
in Mumbai.