The first time Shebin Benson met Asif Ali, he was part of the crew of a film and Asif was playing the lead. Shebin, already an actor by then, was working behind the camera, happily watching a star he had always been fond of. Asif proved all his expectations of a star wrong. This man doesn’t have any airs about himself, Shebin says, sounding almost disappointed. “He is so down-to-earth, so nice to all of us. The same evening we first met, he took me out with him – my brother and me. He’d drive us around, buy us food, or sometimes even take us home and give us the food his wife cooked,” Shebin says of those first days with Asif, on the sets of Anuraga Karikkin Vellam.
Now, two years later, they are again coming together for Kaattu, this time Shebin too in front of the camera with Asif. “I play his friend – Afsal – to Asif’s Nuhu. It is a small but deep character. I have combination scenes both with him and the female lead, Manasa Radhakrishnan,” Shebin says, of a movie that he calls experimental. “It is a period movie. All of us have a dark skin tone as seen in the trailer,” he adds. Kaattu is only one part of his news. The young actor, who came as a boy in Idukki Gold and played one of the main characters, has suddenly got a few movies together. “From Idukki Gold to last year, it has been six movies. But now, this year alone, I got four. It is slowly picking up,” he says, obviously clutching on to the modesty he must have seen in people like Asif.
So apart from Kaattu, there is Kali, Mohanlal and Paviyettante Madhurachooral. “In Kali, I play one of the leads, with Shalu Rahim, who played Dulquer Salman’s younger version in Kammattippadam. It is a fun entertainer, a thriller,” he explains. In the ongoing Mohanlal, Shebin plays Indrajith’s younger version. Four years after his famous debut, he still plays younger versions of lead actors, while also getting regular characters. The fourth film is Paviyettan, written by Sreenivasan after a long time. “I am still learning, growing. So I’d be happy to try on younger versions and other characters that suit my age now, the ones I can’t play when I am older,” says the mature lad.
