R. Madhavan Interview : 'FTII Needs to Make Dramatic Changes in the Way We Select Students'

The quintessential Indian film hero is easy to spot — a man of moral high ground, facing injustice head-on as the camera lingers on his steely face. Every actor seems to want to be him, except R. Madhavan.

Madhavan remains a rare breed in Indian cinema, as the actor-director who’s consistently defied labels. Since his debut with Mani Ratnam’s Alaipayuthey at the turn of the millennium, he’s built a versatile roster, ranging from charming rom-com heroes to soldiers, scientists, and students. But his secret lies in only drawing from real-life experiences.

“As a soldier (in Sikandar (2009)), I derived all my knowledge from the time I spent with the Defence and NCC. In 3 Idiots (2009), from my engineering college experiences and as for Shaitaan (2024), I’m born and brought up in Bihar so I've seen the way people use black magic to scare others,” he recalls. “I take sabbaticals to gather more life experiences, be it spending time with techies and hackers, minimalistic Japanese or the younger generation who are into K-pop. I want to see where they're all going next.”

Having played layered roles in Shaitaan, Yuva (2004), Test (2025), and now starring as Neville McKinley, the Crown’s lawyer in Kesari Chapter 2, he brings to every part a storyteller’s instinct. “I don’t look at it as a hero or anti-hero,” he says. “If I don’t play these characters and be supremely nasty, then it’s difficult for the hero to hit his ball out of the park.” Besides acting, directing and writing, Madhavan also serves as the President of the Film and Television Institute of India.

In this conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India, he opens up about his return to romance with Aap Jaisa Koi, the limits of OTT, his ambitions for FTII, and why he’s stepping back from directing — for now.

Despite being the president of FTII and living in Dubai, these last couple of years have been your most prolific.

It's faster for me to come from Dubai to shoot in Mumbai than it is to come from Chandigarh (laughs). I think FTII is the foremost institute in the world. But we need to make dramatic changes in the way we select students, and the kind of academics we are training them in, so they become relevant and hit the ground running. I want the industry to wait with bated breath for students to graduate and make them a part of it, as opposed to what’s happening right now. For those who want to be relevant and make a career here, their education has to be different [from those who pursue it academically].

Madhavan, do you think the Bollywood hero has become more layered?

I think heroes have changed across the world. Even in Hollywood, the Joker is a guy who kills his mother, and he’s a hero. People are not sticking to the known stencils of what a hero should and shouldn't do, they're going in for grey characters because they’re more believable. 

You’re playing one such twisted character Kesari Chapter 2, a film set against the backdrop of injustice. How do you find it relevant in the Indian socio-political climate today?

Distorted history leads to a wrong perspective of oneself and our country, especially when it’s written through the eyes of biased individuals who make that a part of school syllabi. For instance, who did [revolutionary] Udham Singh kill? Most assume that he killed General [Reginald] Dyer, while he killed General [Michael] O’Dwyer. General Dyer didn't die in prosecution. It’s convoluted so people assume justice was served [for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre] but it wasn't. It was a premeditated genocide, not an incident. We had to put history in the right perspective.

But why now?

Why not now? Why didn't we, or even those in Kerala, not know about [lawyer and statesman] Sir Sankaran Nair? But now, somebody read a book and the Hindi industry made a film about it. Because we didn't know about him, we didn't know that [the massacre] was a planned genocide; planned for a month. We didn’t know that they left the bodies there for 12 hours to rot and be eaten by the eagles. 

Your next film Aap Jaisa Koi is a romcom — quite the shift from Kesari Chapter 2. With the genre struggling in theatres lately, what made you choose it now?

I don't recall any romcom that has worked on OTT platforms either. I know the Korean [dramas] work but I don't recall seeing any hardcore, Indian, romantic film. Let alone one that is age-appropriate for a 55 year old. And I think they’re the most romantic people in the world, because this generation, my generation, knows how much importance to give our partners, because we've lived through so much. It’s low-hanging fruit to be plucked in this genre but we don't have writers. Writers who can see films like As Good as It Gets (1997) as romantic stories. I can't forget those dialogues! 

Speaking of romcoms, the re-release of Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein outperformed its original run at the box-office last year. But many believe there isn’t as much money in making such films today.

Don't blame the money. Get us a story, no? One that is well researched. No one does romance like Shah Rukh [Khan] but one needs a heroine of his age as well. That’s getting difficult to find.

Speaking of good stories, do you write scripts as well? What’s your process?

I write screenplays and dialogues, as I did for Rocketry: The Nambi Effect (2022). I had people who assisted me, but I was the main writer. I’ve also written dialogues for some of my other Tamil and Hindi films. As a writer, I like to start by writing what the actor sees physically, what the camera sees. Not the poetic stuff. Then, I get into the intangibles (like the moon shining overhead) and start writing the reasons behind those scenes.

Besides being an actor and writer, you also turned director. And in an interview, you mentioned that as an actor, you often give wrong suggestions to gauge your directors’ responses. So now as director, how do you test your actors?

Casting is extremely important. Why is an actor picking the film and saying yes to me? They could look the part and be brilliant, but if their reason for doing the film is the opposite of mine, then it wouldn’t work. I have actually paid actors and then said, ‘Sorry, we'll work together another time, because you're not right for the film’. The casting parameters are very tangible at first —  testing to see if they know the languages, have available dates, are okay with the money. For instance in Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, the actors had to speak all three languages we were shooting in — Hindi, Tamil and English. Then come the intangibles, which is where I step in.

What are you planning to direct next?

I am not planning to direct for a bit now, because I think I have so much to give as an actor. Being a director takes away two to three years of my life and I am not ready to invest that much right now. 

How does one become relevant enough?

OTT platforms make it easier for a lot more creative people to be part of the industry. If they didn’t exist, the abysmal number of films that we make would hardly offer any scope for actors, artists or technicians. Because of OTT, a lot of people who would’ve not gotten a chance on the big screen earlier, are now huge stars. But having said that, a maximum of about four crore people come to watch films in the theatres in a 140 crore population. We are doing something terribly wrong to keep all those people away. If we manage to get even 10 per cent of the public to come to theatres then the ticket size of our industry will be way bigger than it is today. So as filmmakers and studios we should wonder why theatres are at 17 per cent occupancy traditionally around the year.

What do you think today's audiences are really looking for — from theatres versus OTT — and how do Indian films stack up against Hollywood today?

The content that works on OTT won’t work on the big screen and vice versa. I loved bingeing Adolescence (2025) on OTT, but make that into a [theatrical] film and I’d walk out in the first half hour. It's a far more intense community experience in the theatre and you've come paying solid cash. You are also paying for OTT platforms, but not every time you watch content. So you don't feel the pinch as much.

But when you pay for a movie running in theatres, you make an effort to park your car, buy popcorn, and manage to get there on time despite traffic, so you want that screen to really engage you. You want it to make you feel aspirational, things you can retain. Hollywood, though, has failed us in the last few years. None of them have had an impact on me, like The Usual Suspects (1995), Interstellar (2014) or A Beautiful Mind (2001) did. I dare say that Indian films have had a much bigger impact — Kantara (2022), the Pushpa franchise, Manjummel Boys (2024), Chhaava (2025) or as a matter of fact, even Kesari Chapter 2. I've never seen the audience react like that to a Hollywood film.