The Great Bachelor

It has been a decade since Arya started his career as an actor with Vishnu Vardhan’s Arinthum Ariyamalum. Later he found himself as a busy artiste in Tamil and Telugu. It was in 2011 that Arya acted in a movie that speaks Malayalam, his mother tongue for the first time with Santhosh Sivan directed Urumi in which he appeared in a guest role. Again, after a gap of four years, he came back to Malayalam with Lijo Jose Pellissery’s multi-starrer Double Barrel, which had him in the role of the producer also. Since then, he has been part of August Cinemas, one of the leading production houses in Malayalam, with Prithviraj, Shaji Natesan and Santhosh Sivan as partners.

Now, for the first time, Arya is coming to Malayalam to essay a full-length prominent role in a movie — The Great Father, which hits the screens on Thursday. About his late entry to Malayalam, he says, “I grew up and studied in Chennai; acting was nowhere in my agenda.”

“It happened at an unexpected moment. Later, I found it interesting and decided to accept more offers. The Great Father will be my first Malayalam film in which I essay a throughout character.”

In this Mammootty-starrer, he acts as the cop Andrews Eapen. “When director Haneef came up with this project, I found this role interesting. This is really a bit heavy and with a slight negative shade.  But as its producer, I suggested to him to try to cast someone who is active in Malayalam itself. I said so because I felt that this character deserved such an actor. Though Haneef approached two-three actors, they were all hesitant to accept this role because of the negative shade. Later, I decided to accept the role. As I am comparatively new in Malayalam, I had no image barrier and was free in all senses to essay this role,” he says, adding, “Andrews is really new for me. He is an officer with Crime Branch, but not like a uniformed cop. No one easily identifies him as a police. I have not done such a role so far.”

The main challenge in front of Arya while doing The Great Father was the shooting dates. “Initially I thought that I had to allot around one week or a maximum of 10 days for the shoot as the number of days per schedule I had given for Double Barrel was almost like that. But later I understood that I had to be here in Kerala for 45 days because of my combination scenes with other actors including Mammookka. This became an issue for the shoot of my Tamil film Kadamban. But owing to the specialty of my character and the strong story, I opted to give priority to The Great Father,” he says.

When the teaser of Kadamban got released via YouTube, it went viral and was compared to Pulimurugan. He laughs and says, “My film is completely shot inside the forest and we had to shoot with animals. In some scenes, I had to share screen space with 60 elephants. The situation cannot be predicted. While shooting such a scene, our cinematographer slipped and fell down. Suddenly the elephant stopped there and waited until we resumed the shoot. It was really an unbelievable situation. Like that we had to take extra effort for that film.”

When it comes to the comparison, he says, “I feel it was because of the forest, involvement of animals and of course, the action sequences that such a comparison happened. The good thing in the case of Pulimurugan was that they could break the budget constraints that prevailed in Malayalam cinema. It can be termed as an eye-opener for Malayalam industry.”

Asked about his marriage plans, he says, “My life is going good. Why should I take a decision that changes that pace,” he laughs, adding, “As of now, there are no such plans.”