After the release of Jailer 2's trailer, talk is abuzz with Suraj Venjaramoodu's role in the film, and how the Malayalam actor is facing off against Rajinikanth's Muthuvel Pandian in the sequel.
But growing up in Venjaramoodu, a village outside Thiruvananthapuram, obsessing over Tamil cinema was not a habit Suraj Vasudevan had to work hard to cultivate.
Better known by his screen name Suraj Venjaramoodu, — the National Award-winning actor who has appeared in over 250 Malayalam films and built a reputation as one of his industry’s most versatile performers — grew up with a theatre right next door that played Tamil movies all year.
Learning the language and understanding its cinema culture was something he was born into. He takes a very specific cinephilic pride in calling this ‘next-door theatre’ one of the few in Kerala in which “Prabhu’s Chinna Thambi ran for 150 days”.
“Don’t forget that I’m talking about a proper B-class theatre,” he adds, underlining the gravity of this rarity.
As a boy of just 10, he had his own special way of watching every new release in this theatre. When a new movie played, especially when it was Tamil, Venjaramoodu would stick his ears to the walls of his house that were closest to the theatre.
The proximity was such that he could hear all the film’s dialogues and understand most of the film’s plot. “When the bell rang for the interval, I’d run over and sneak in casually with someone who had come out for a loo break. I’ve seen the second half of most Tamil movies from the early ’90s. But I’ve only heard the first halves,” he jokes.
Best Laid Plans
He started out his career as a mimicry artiste, performing across the length and breadth of Kerala. Raised in a family of army men, it was expected that he would join the forces too, like his father and later, his older brother. A career in mimicry was frowned upon, but Venjaramoodu describes everything that’s happened in his life as serendipitious.
“When I was 13, I fell off my bicycle and broke my right hand,” he says; there’s still a scar. “With such a severe injury, there was no way I could join the army. What was expected of me became the duty of my older brother. He’s in the army now.”
It was this army man brother of his who first introduced him to the world of mimicry; they eventually switched roles and career paths.
“To this day, my brother jokes that I’m living his life. He looks at my Benz and acts like it is rightfully his,” he says.
This career switch soon evolved to roles in Malayalam movies in 2001, and then to more formidable roles soon after as one of the most bankable comedy actors of the industry. At the peak of his career, just him entering a scene was enough to lead to laughter.
From Punchline to Protagonist
But just as comedians in our cinema are seen as flavours of a particular season or two, Venjaramoodu was self-aware enough to realise that his career as comic sidekick was going to be short-lived. “Like the audience, I too became tired of seeing myself play the same comedy role in every other movie,” he says.
When films were being pitched to him, Venjaramoodu made the first move and asked directors to consider him in meatier, more serious roles. He finally got his chance in Perariyathavar (2015). He shot for the film for 15 days, playing a nameless garbage collector and won the National Award for Best Actor.
“Of course, there were several congratulatory calls and messages but none of them had seen the movie. It was only when I acted in Action Hero Biju that people began to take me seriously,” the actor notes.
He had all of three scenes in Action Hero Biju (2016), and when he appeared on screen, the audiences expected another comic turn. But when his character breaks down after learning that the child he had raised for years belonged to another man, it marked the beginning of a new chapter. The man who had long made audiences laugh suddenly moved them to tears.
Then there was no looking back. His leading roles in films such as Thondimuthalum Drikshakshiyum, The Great Indian Kitchen and Android Kunjappan have changed how audiences perceived not just him but Malayalam cinema as a whole.
The Language of Reinvention
“I’d always wanted to do a Tamil film,” he says, recalling the offers he got after Action Hero Biju.
He began to reach out to Tamil directors and producers, prepared to wait for a role that would take him across the border. To his disbelief, when he was watching the Tamil film Chithha (2023), he got a call from the director. And when SU Arun Kumar narrated a script to him the next day, he realised, “But my years of watching Tamil cinema hadn’t helped me. I didn’t understand a word.”
He came on board without knowing the whole picture. Though he was promised limited dialogues in Tamil, he says, “On day one, we were shooting an eight-minute-long single take. There was a lot of running around and almost all the characters in the film had a dialogue or two with me. My dialogue sheets were more than five pages. I thought I’d get a heart attack!”
He began to frantically read those pages, written in ‘Tanglish’, and got an associate to send voice notes on WhatsApp with all his lines. Every single mistake meant retaking the whole eight-minute sequence.
“But after a few takes, we all somehow managed to pull through. It was a trial by fire, but it also gave me the belief that I could do just about anything after that.”
Word spread fast. Just as he finished his first Tamil film, he was already signed on to do Jailer 2. In the recent releases, Youth and Kara, Venjaramoodu’s characters became something of a highlight and a talking point. He’s now as busy and important to Tamil cinema as he’s been in Malayalam.
“But it’s far from easy,” he says. “I was at the dubbing studio till 10 last night, trying to get just one line right. If a Malayalam film takes me two days to dub, Tamil now takes 10.”
From mimicry artiste to comedy actor, from character actor in Malayalam to leading man in Tamil — we are watching Venjaramoodu reinvent himself, yet again.
“When I had that accident back in 10th grade, I felt all was lost. Who’d want to cast me in a film if I’m unable to perform a stunt, drive a car or even drink a cup of tea without it looking awkward on screen? But none of that matters in cinema. As long as you’re willing to go the extra mile, even a broken arm cannot stop you from anything.”