For Malayalam star Nivin Pauly, the journey from the boy-next-door romantic hero of his early career to more serious and performance-oriented roles has been marked by great successes and experiments.
But after exploring different genres over the years, the actor says he is now consciously coming back to entertainment driven films. In this exclusive chat with NDTV, the talented star talks about his recent blockbuster Bethlehem Family UnitHe is now looking into scripts and more.
Universal Maya Was a hit, though Bethlehem Family Unit It surpassed its success to become the highest grossing Malayalam film. Earning over Rs 310 crore at the box office, the Girish AD-directed film has struck a strong chord with family audiences.
Ask Nivin Pauly why it resonates with him so much, and he says, “It’s all about relatable, authentic, honest scripts. The success of these films has made me realize that I should focus on entertainment. Earlier, I used to choose scripts of any genre. It could be a thriller, it could be a serious role, now I can focus on just one film. Entertainment, I think Sarvam Maya, Bethlehem Kudamba Unit and the film I am currently doing with Rukmini Vasant – all these films are in that area.”
One of the impressive aspects of Bethlehem Kudumba Unit (BKU) The way it has brought family audiences to theatres. Despite being built around an old man-young woman romance, the film has found an audience beyond young audiences. “I think it’s because of the writing. Director Girish Eddy wrote it very well. Both characters (Ashley and Justin) were very relatable. Both were imperfect roles – they were imperfect protagonists. I think people related to those characters – the hero, the heroine, and all the supporting characters. Right now, audiences love such honest films, where they can be honest with their families. Parents, with their children and I think that could be one of the reasons why the film became such a hit.”
The family response to BKU, produced by Bhavana Studios, was especially meaningful for the actor. “We are really happy that the family audience likes the film. We are getting a lot of messages and calls saying that we can take our grandparents and our kids to the theater because it is a ‘clean’ film. The audience is getting a chance to watch the film with their entire family – that is the biggest draw of this film,” smiles. love the star
The mouth The star has experimented with several genres during his career, including dark roles, but audiences have a strong connection with his boy-next-door persona. Premam, in particular, became a major turning point, with the film enjoying a phenomenal theatrical run in Chennai and elsewhere. “In my early days, most of my roles were boy-next-door, romantic films and comedy roles – like I said, all those roles are very imperfect, very relatable. One of the audience. I think that was one of the reasons why I wanted to play such characters but I also felt the need to challenge myself. As an actor, we should try different roles and different directors. should work with different parts of our journey,” he insists.
After loveHowever, he found himself at a crossroads. Ritchie Starr feels, “It would have been easy to do more rom-coms after Premam. But Premam was a benchmark. After that film, I was looking for a script that could do better than Premam. I wanted to do something different, more serious and performance-oriented. That’s why I did Muthan, Thurmukham, Padvetu and all those films.”
So far, there are several filmmakers that Nivin wants to collaborate with, including Tarun Murthy, Vibin Das, Amal Neerad and Martin Prakat. He is also a fan of Tamil film director Nelson Dilipkumar and would love to work with the Jailer director. And there is one Malayalam star in particular with whom he wanted to share screen space for a long time. “I want to work with Mamuka. It’s my dream,” he says, referring to Mammootty. “I’m still waiting!”