A deliberate sabbatical

Back then John Kokken had not thought of acting. He was working as a model in Mumbai. But then one day he ran into Jeeyen Krishnakumar, a director, on one of his trips home to Kerala. Krishnakumar asked him why he was not acting, and then took it upon himself to train John for eight months. So 12 years later when Krishnakumar called him to act in his film, John asked no questions at all. He came to play a ‘nice negative character’ in Tiyaan, acting opposite Prithviraj.

Tiyaan is Krishnakumar’s third feature film, after College Days and Kaanchi.
“He has portrayed me in a way negative characters have not been portrayed before,” says John, sitting at the Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad where the film is being shot. “It is also great to work with Prithvi — he is young and fun and we talk a lot.” He has not acted in a Malayalam for many years, despite being active in other languages.

“To be honest, I had stayed away deliberately after a bad experience in Shikkar,” John says. After signing a contract that had him play a prominent role, for 15 to 17 days, he ended up shooting only for two days. “I gave them my time, I trusted them.” After that he became skeptical and didn’t accept the offers he got in between.

All that while he worked in other films – Baahubali, Sardaar Gabbar Singh, Janatha Garage being the most recent ones. The last Malayalam film he worked in is Alexander the Great.