George the actor, writer or director… What do you think is your biggest strength?Īs of now, purely out of having more opportunities and and experiences, it has to be a writer.Īs a writer, do you feel that moving forward, you’ll be writing more scripts keeping the OTT-theatre demarcation in mind? We went on that journey, and later I was in a space where I wanted to make a little something on my own, and Thirike is an amalgam of everything I wanted to do. The opportunity that came to me was a writing gig for Njandugalude. You are here and you grab at every opportunity you get.
How has the time from Premam till now, been for you as an actor? You’ve mentioned your dream of being a lead actor.
The whole film has been a very big learning experience for us, and we felt that we were very small by the end of this process. It is that state we all, at least in theory, wish to be in. They are pure souls who don’t hide anything nor do they have any ill feelings towards anybody. But the truth is that if we make a little effort and get to know and spend time with them, we begin to realise that they are far greater human beings than us. Usually, if there is a special person around us, we tend to look at them from a distance, sympathise and feel that we are the bigger person. There’s this line that I wrote at the beginning, which says, “Let’s not sympathise, let’s celebrate” and that is the lens with which we approached the film. I tweaked the script a bit to match his personality and pattern of speech. In a couple of weeks, his parents came to Kochi with him, and we immediately bonded. ‘ Ente jeevan poyi (I was half dead) because I was like, do I just have one option for this?’ He soon sent Gopi’s TikTok videos and I was instantly floored because he had a spark, and I knew that he was born for this. He told me to not ask for a second option. However, he told me that of the ten thousand kids he was mentoring, he only had one face in mind. When I started searching for an actor to play Ismu’s character, I got in touch with a lot of mentors, doctors and support groups, and I finally contacted Dr Shaji of Baby Memorial Hospital, Kozhikode, who is one of the authoritative voices for Down’s Syndrome in South India. Thirike is like a manifestation of how it would be had I had a brother. I then decided to do something smaller and more personal, which we could crowdfund. But things didn’t work out, and the industry had other plans for me. Like everyone else, I wanted to make a film with big superstars. I had written a story about four years ago. We are very used to seeing actors play differently-abled characters. It’s just a coincidence that both Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela and Thirike deal with sensitive topics, and that they are my first two films. I am somebody who tries to see the sunshine in sad situations, or say, the humour in the tragedy. Njandukalude and Thirike could have been hard-hitting films considering their theme, but you chose to narrate them in a feel-good way…
Those are the kinds of films that I aspire to make as well. I always gravitate towards films that you can keep in a small video library in your homes, and the ones that you feel like revisiting every now and then. It is the sense of wanting to make very honest films. Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela, Last Day of Summer and now Thirike … What motivates you to tell real stories? Excerpts from a conversation between Meera Venugopal and the actor, who has also written and co-directed the film with Sam Xavier. Thirike releases on Neestream on February 26. His latest outing Thirike is a story of brotherhood and TikTok star Gopi Krishnan, who has Down’s Syndrome, plays the elder brother.
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