Jyotika and Suriya, one of Tamil cinema’s most iconic on-screen pairs and off-screen power couples, are posing. The chemistry is off the charts. It’s hard to imagine that in September they celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary – Jo giggles and wonders what their kids will think! They haven’t done a film together in decades but are personal and professional partners who are enjoying a special year — she had the streaming success System and he, the theatrical blockbuster Karuppu. They personify wellness, internal and external, as they speak with The Hollywood Reporter India at Nilaya Anthology.
Edited excerpts from the conversation.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER INDIA: It’s been 20 years since you last shot together. What did this reunion feel like?
SURIYA: This is going to be a memory for us. What are the kids going to say?
JYOTIKA: It was exciting to leave home in the morning, both of us going to work on the same set.
THR INDIA: This is also a big year for both of you — System in May, and Karuppu, the blockbuster of your career, Suriya. In September, you complete 20 years of marriage. What’s the secret sauce?
SURIYA: I think it’s just love — and understanding. Situations change, scenarios change, but you learn. The last interview we did together was during the pandemic, for Jai Bhim. There was a bit that went viral, about what a woman needs — that wasn’t my own wisdom, it was something I learned from her. I say she’s my teacher and I’m the student here.
JYOTIKA: That’s what makes a marriage work — love, respect, appreciating each other. You have to stop him, otherwise he’ll go on.
SURIYA: I think when something’s missing, that’s when you learn.
Craft and Chemistry
THR INDIA: You’ve both been acting for nearly 30 years — since 1997, when Suriya debuted with Nerukku Ner and Jyotika with Doli Saja Ke Rakhna. Do you talk shop at home?
JYOTIKA: All the time — what’s working, what isn’t, and why. Every decade the craft changes completely. Watching a lot of OTT content now, we see such fine, almost subconscious acting. There’s so much to unlearn and relearn, and we debate it at home constantly.
SURIYA: You can do a 200-day shoot with total conviction and it sinks without a trace, and a 45-day shoot becomes the year’s biggest blockbuster. After 30 years, I can’t say I’ve learned enough to coast for the next 10 or 15. There’s always unlearning to do.
THR INDIA: In a 2004 interview with The Hindu — two years before your wedding — you, Suriya, said the difference between a good actor and a mediocre one is the ability to hold a lengthy shot, and that Jyotika had it. Were you always studying her acting?
SURIYA: You sense it when an actor is truly present in a take, and when they’re just waiting for their line. With her, there’s an intensity — she’s a very sensitive person in real life too, so she can fully surrender to the moment. I do a lot of layering across takes, drawing on memory and past experience. She can be there immediately. During the pandemic, her brother gave us a page of dialogue for a screen test at home — no crew, just a mobile camera — and she brought real tears in one take. I remember thinking, ‘I’m not ready for this’.
JYOTIKA: Don’t let him go on. He’s very emotional about me. But honestly — even doing Hindi films, I can’t fully emote in a language that isn’t my own.
Scene Stealers
THR INDIA: Jyotika, in System, there’s a moment where your husband, wheelchair-bound after an accident, asks if you long to make love — and your eyes shift. It’s devastating. What went into that?
JYOTIKA: I went out of focus, into the thought process of really being in that situation — using yourself to reach your goal, against your own belief system. The whole process is the opposite of preparation for me: I go in and leave space for how I’ll behave in the moment. It’s what comes through the eyes. Sometimes it’s captured; sometimes it isn’t, and you don’t know until the edit. Big credit to the editor for what they pick up.
THR INDIA: And Suriya, that climax in Karuppu — the body language, the fierceness. That could easily have gone wrong.
SURIYA: Very much a fine line. Another actor had done something close before, so audiences knew the intensity already set. R.J. Balaji called six months after we’d wrapped, edit locked, and said he wasn’t happy with the climax — could we do this? We travelled from Hyderabad to Chennai and shot it in two days. There was a statue on set; I prayed to it before every take, asked it to guide me. I’d seen YouTube videos of people at village festivals believing a deity had entered them mid-ritual — that’s where the emotion for the sequence came from.
JYOTIKA: That shoot was done with real sincerity.
Leap of Faith
THR INDIA: Karuppu nearly didn’t release — the opening shows were cancelled, and R.J. Balaji broke down on video asking fans for patience. How did you two get through that?
SURIYA: Thanks to her, honestly. It was a real financial burden — I took on extra loans at the last minute, and she trusted me to do it, knowing that as a family, we’d face the consequences together if it went wrong. It was a leap of faith.
JYOTIKA: I’ll take the compliment, but it was completely his generosity and his will to make the film work.
SURIYA: It was collective — R.J. Balaji gave over two years to it, the financiers agreed to wait on their share, theatre owners cooperated. The film released properly because everyone held on together.
Wellness Check
THR INDIA: Your Instagram workouts are exhausting to even watch. How do you both think about wellness now?
SURIYA: Every decade, fitness means something different. In your 20s, it’s about biceps and a good T-shirt body — vanity, essentially. Then, professionally, you need explosive power for action and dance.
Now, for me, it’s about mobility — how fluid you are, whether you can trek, run with your kid, lift your own luggage without your back aching. It’s not about the muscles you show off any more; it’s about function.
I’ve seen people close to me get a clean bill of health at a general check-up and pass away the very next day. There’s a Tamil saying — alavukku mirinaal, amudhamum nanju — in excess, even nectar turns to poison. Sleep, food, stress, work, ambition — it all needs balance. I’m still working on getting there myself.
JYOTIKA: He works every day; we have to pull him out for our marked-out vacations.
SURIYA: Vitamin D, B12, basic supplements matter more than people realise. And for women especially — past 40 or 50, the knees often give up first.
It’s a late realisation for most, but strengthening those muscles early makes all the difference. My sister, my mom — I keep telling them to strengthen their muscles.
JYOTIKA: I never went to a gym — I was into yoga and running outdoors, which I loved. About six or seven years ago I met the right trainer, Mahesh, and it’s been four years of strength training since. Post-40, for women, strength training should come first.
I went in wanting to lose weight, like most women do, and he told me: ‘Get stronger, the rest follows’. I’m addicted to it now — it gives me a high.
Grounded by Design
THR INDIA: Your daughter Diya’s short film Leading Light, on women gaffers, played at the Mumbai International Film Festival. How involved were you?
JYOTIKA: Barely — the only thing she borrowed from us was the car, to move equipment. She organised everything herself, which made us proud precisely because we didn’t help.
It was for her U.S. college applications, but it wasn’t about cinema by design — she’s interested in sports, politics, venture capital, all kinds of things. She’s a typical eldest child too: process-driven, always talking about how she’ll be financially independent.
SURIYA: She’s exactly like me that way. My son and Jyotika are the relaxed ones — leisure time matters as much as work time to them.
THR INDIA: You read the script of Kaathal: The Core — where you play the wife of a closeted gay man — to your kids first?
JYOTIKA: I bounce a two-line pitch of scripts I like off them and take their feedback — it helps me check whether we’re picking the right stories for their generation. They were thrilled, not awkward about it at all.
I think Gen Z has its balance right — they want working hours that leave room for basketball, for their health, not just money. My son says five or six lakh [rupees] a year is enough — eat, sleep, watch movies, play a sport, done. We’re the ones who feel guilty taking a break; that’s our conditioning, not theirs.
THR INDIA: The two of you have also spoken about how, in your kids’ Mumbai school, most parents have no idea how big a star you are — and you’re happy with that.
SURIYA: There’s no VIP syndrome here. Walking around Mumbai, going to restaurants, we’re free of it — we get to just be with the kids.
JYOTIKA: That’s what keeps us well, honestly — that and knowing when to switch off.
THR INDIA: They don’t hype you up?
JYOTIKA: No, not at all.
SURIYA: My daughter says, ‘They don’t recognise you, they recognise amma’.
JYOTIKA: One minute, that’s because it’s always the other way. One time when they say, ‘oh, we know Jyotika’, is when we celebrate. The other day we were travelling and they all knew you [Suriya]. And Diya was like, ‘Mom, you gotta up your game. No one knows you here’. So, at home it’s a very grounded atmosphere for sure. He’s just being humble. He’s just a humble guy.