Exclusive | Murali Sharma on Playing A Father (Again) in 'Super Subbu': 'The Script Throws Things at You'

Super Subbu, Netflix's first Telugu original series, directed by Mallik Ram, stars Sundeep Kishan, Mithila Palkar and veteran actor Murali Sharma. The comedy drama follows a young man, Subbu, who becomes an adult sex education officer in a rural village. Sharma, who plays Kokuteshwara, Subbu’s strict father, talked about how he has played father roles across many films and the specific challenge of finding new details in every new character in a conversation with THR India. 

With Kokuteshwara, the starting point came from the character's name. "The name only first gave me ideas strangely - who is called Kokuteshwara?" Sharma explained with a laugh. From there, he and Mallik Ram spoke at length about the character before shooting began. "We spoke about 20 times in two days."

But even after those conversations, the character was not fully formed when the camera rolled. "On the first day that we shot, it was still half-baked," Sharma said. He asked Ram if they could reshoot some portions because he felt the character had "still not come in totally."

A detail that eventually anchored the role was Kokuteshwara having been a lecturer in the past. The makers gave Sharma a list of English classroom phrases to choose from and told him to pick whichever he felt would blend into his character's mannerisms. “We knew he was a lecturer earlier, and lecturers say things like 'Get out of my class.’ We were trying to play with these words,” director Mallik Ram noted. Among these, Sharma found the phrase “I say” to be the most accurate to what his character might say.

Another anecdote he related involved a line in Telugu about sixty girls having rejected Subbu’s marriage proposal, followed by Sharma repeating in an accented pronunciation, "60 girls." He said he had not planned to emphasise the word "girls" the way it ultimately came out. "I never thought I will say it like that, I didn't know till then I will do it like that," he admitted.

The actor described his approach as coming from a deep reading of the script rather than pre-planning his performance.  "Many times the script throws things at you," he noted. "You have to be so much into it while you're reading it, that you should be able to absorb changes in between the lines or in between situations." He said the second table read was where the shape of Kokuteshwara began to become clear.

Sharma said he considers himself "blessed" that this process has worked out for him so far. "Sometimes you fail, sometimes it doesn't come," he expressed. "That's my whole fear, what if I don't find that new element the next time a father role or a cop role or anything comes?"

Super Subbu is streaming now on Netflix.