Fifteen years deep into a versatile filmography, Gulshan Devaiah is still finding new terrain to conquer.
Fresh off his Telugu cinema debut with Samantha Ruth Prabhu’s Maa Inti Bangaram, the actor is now stepping into a genre he hasn't quite explored before with filmmaker Kaushal Oza’s children's film, Little Thomas.
Featuring filmmaker Anurag Kashyap as one of the producers, the film stars him alongside Rasika Dugal, who was last seen in Mirzapur: The Movie.
"I don't particularly look to do anything when projects come to me. I've grown up watching all kinds of movies in all kinds of languages that I even didn't understand," Devaiah told THR India when asked if stepping into the children's film genre is a shift he was actively looking to make. "Even now, I don't understand some of these languages, but I’ll still watch them."
Set in Goa of the 90s, the film follows Thomas (Hridansh Parekh), the only child of his parents, who longs for a younger brother to complete his family. Determined to get one, he goes on an innocent mission of questions and comical experiments to find out how his bickering parents can give him one.
Devaiah, however, clarifies that there really is "no such thing" as a children’s film. There are only family films.
“Every children's movie is a family film because we need the family to buy the tickets and take children to the theatres. It’s a challenge because it costs more money for a family outing, as opposed to going and watching. Pushpa 2, for example. A whole bunch of guys will go because that's a very male centric subject,” says the actor, adding to the growing narrative around the decline of children's films and the socio-economic factors that make going to the theatres a difficult choice.
Saying yes to Little Thomas, then, also came from wanting to push his limits as an actor. “I'm curious to see which genres and sensibilities I can serve as an actor, how versatile and diverse my skill set can be."
The film is produced by Luminoso Pictures, Civic Studios, Good Bad Films, and Ranjan Singh's Flip Films and Kashyap
The film centers on a little boy's naive question of where do babies come from, which is so universal that it almost makes it just as relevant to address from a child’s point of view.
But, along with films like these that tackle real questions, Devaiah also feels that everything must exist in this industry.
"The mindless mass entertainer or ultra-violent films also have their place. They tend to draw a lot of attention from the press and are publicised more in terms of how enormously successful they become. It pumps up the egos to the maximum limit too, and that tends to be looked at as the truest form of success. But the real nature of the business is quite complex,” he explains.
He recalls that Konkona Sen Sharma's directorial debut A Death in the Gunj (2016), in which he played Nandu, one of the leading characters, was successful not only culturally, but also artistically and financially. And yet, nobody remembered it as that.
"A Death in the Gunj was successful, but nobody will talk about it as a successful film because they don't know the cost, how many screens it released in, the cost to return ratio, etc."
Speaking of the Indian film industry at large and what it assumes the audience wants to watch, Devaiah feels that India is a "complex country" and therefore, one can't generalise what viewers want.
"We have so many cultures, languages and sensibilities. There’s so much socio-economic gradation. We talk about what the audience wants in broad strokes, but nobody really knows."