Actor-filmmaker Prithviraj Sukumaran has talked about his transformation for The Goat Life and shared that he knew he would have to go through a drastic physical transformation, losing a lot of weight and looking very emaciated.
The Malayalam film Aadujeevitham or The Goat Life is directed by Blessy.
The film is based on Benyamin’s bestselling 2008 novel of the same name and tells the true story of Najeeb, an immigrant labourer from Kerala forced into slavery on a remote goat farm in a Middle Eastern country.
“I knew as an actor that this was a prerequisite, that to actually portray the entire character arc, I’d have to go through this drastic physical transformation of losing a lot of weight and looking very emaciated,” Sukumaran told a media source.
For the film, which was shot across Kerala, Jordan and Algeria, Prithviraj had to increase his weight to 98 kg for the Kerala part of the shoot and for the scenes where he first arrives in the Middle East. The production then paused for seven months while Sukumaran shed 31 kg.
“I surprised myself and everyone in the film crew, because when I landed up the next time in Jordan, I was almost unrecognisable,” Sukumaran said.
The actor did not bargain on Covid-19, which stalled the shoot immediately after a scene where his emaciated body was revealed, and the crew was stranded in locked-down Jordan for months. They came back after a year and a half, during which the star had to regain weight just to stay healthy.
“But then I had to redo the whole thing. I didn’t count on having to do the whole weight loss transformation process two times, which I ended up having to do because it’s a trap. Once you get to that level and you do a portion of the film, then it almost becomes like a thought process in your head. ‘No, I can’t let it go'. I put in so much effort. I can’t let all that go to waste,” he said.
“I know a lot of the (media) focus is on the physical transformation, but that is only a small part of the portrayal. At the very beginning, I had thought of the entire arc. And I had told Blessy that it was going to be impossible for me as an actor to look at it as one long, singular character,” Sukumaran said.
Up next for Prithviraj is filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar’s actioner Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, where he plays the antagonist to Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff, as per the source.
Talking about the film, he said: “It’s pretty much planned to be a franchise if things go well. You look at James Bond or Mission Impossible, in each film, the actual story is the villain’s and then the hero comes to save the world.”
Prithviraj shared that the crux of the film, the plot, is actually his character Kabir’s story and because of that, the character arc is beautiful.
He said: “It’s a very complex character. It’s not your typical one-note bad guy. There is a past, there is a reason why he’s wearing the mask, why his voice is that way. It was a really fun character to play. And I don’t get offered to play these really cool bad guys very often.”
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan releases this week during the Eid frame.
