Two roles, poles apart

Malavika Mohanan is one of those lucky actresses of Mollywood who gets to begin their career with leading actors of the industry. Having begun her journey with Pattam Pole, playing the love interest of Dulquer Salmaan, Malavika was fortunate again to get a breakthrough with Nirnayakam, in which she acted alongside Asif Ali. Now, the pretty actress is busy enacting the role of a police officer in The Great Father along with Arya. She is also the female lead in Naale starring Fahadh Faasil.

“I joined the sets of The Great Father on the first week of October. Mammootty sir plays the central character in it. Then there is Arya. My combination scenes are with Arya,” says Malavika, who is having a good time on the sets. “I was surprised to know that Arya and I hail from Payyanur,” she laughs.

Her character’s name in The Great Father is Meera. “She is a serious, stylish cop, who comes wearing T-shirts and trousers.” Everything went well for Malavika in The Great Father except dialogue delivery. “I have some heavy Malayalam dialogues in the movie. Rendering it was a tad difficult as we don’t use such words in everyday life,” she smiles.

However, for Malavika, the most challenging role she has done so far is the tribal woman in Naale. “When the director offered me this role, my first question to him was ‘why me?’  Because I am a girl who was brought up in Mumbai and I look like a city girl. I was even scared whether Malayali audience would accept me in that get-up,” says the actress who did some homework for the role. “I stayed with the tribal people to know their lifestyle and spent a good amount of time with them during the shooting to get their body language right.” The shooting of Naale is still going on. Meanwhile, Malavika’s first Kannada movie Naanu Mattu Varalakshmi is slated for release in November.

Ask her what kind of roles she prefers doing, she says, “I don’t take up all projects. It is of no use doing back-to-back films. I prefer doing strong female characters, a healthy combination of commercial and serious movies. And, my ultimate goal is Bollywood.”