In Conversation With Actor R Madhavan, A Star For All Time

Produced by Chirag Mohanty Samal
Co-produced by Bayar Jain and Ishika Laul
Photographs by Manasi Sawant
Styled by Chandani Mehta
Assisted by Astha Kothari and Zainab
Hair by Satish Gole
Make-up by Jithu Shinde
Location: Larrikin Juhu, Mumbai

It is an electrifying morning. Even the dogs of Juhu Beach in Mumbai seem to sense the anticipation, as not a whimper cuts through the silence. The shoot crew is equally charged. Actor R Madhavan is on a stopover in the city for a cover shoot with Travel+Leisure India & South Asia, and the atmosphere is buzzing.

The clock strikes 12—we’re running right on schedule. “I haven’t had panipuri in years!”, a baritone voice emerges as the cameras begin clicking. And just like that, the versatile actor puts everyone at ease. The stylist goes on to suggest her favourite chaat spots in Mumbai, and the editor reminisces Kolkata’s iconic puchkas. Amid these friendly debates, Madhavan says, “Nothing compares to the panipuri you get on the street.”

Right then, I get a glimpse of the charm that defines Travel+Leisure India & South Asia’s March cover star, actor R Madhavan. Madhavan, or Maddy as he is lovingly called, has had fans swooning over him since the 90s. The predominantly female crew today is no exception—me included!

“It’s surreal [when fans compliment me],” the cover star says, perfectly in sync with my fangirl grin. “[When I post pictures online], my wife tells me to start behaving my age. When I look at myself in those pictures, I’m also burdened with the responsibility of being the chairman of FTII, so I’m expected to look a certain way. It’s like two different languages,” he continues.

But it is difficult to navigate negativity in the age of social media. Madhavan dismisses my assumptions, “No, no! Trolls don’t bother me. Trolls are very weak and have absolutely no job. To me, they’re inconsequential.”

The Man with the Midas Touch

I find it hard to believe that the multilingual actor could have any haters. When director Mani Ratnam cast him as a free-spirited engineering graduate in the Tamil language movie Alai Payuthey, the tag of ‘romantic hero’ stuck with the actor. The following year in 2001, movies such as Minnale and Dumm Dumm Dumm, both in Tamil, added weight to this nickname. With the release of the Hindi-language film Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein in the same year, this moniker was further cemented. Did this bring with it the challenge of being typecast? I question. Madhavan has it all planned.

I don’t generally repeat my films just because they’re successful,” he explains. “I could easily make a part two, three, or even five. I could continue working in patriotic roles. But audiences are moving, and I have to be faster than them. I have to be aspirational enough for audiences to come and watch me on screen. Not being typecast is just an outcome of trying. Growth must be constant.”

In this pursuit for growth, the Jamshedpur-born star has tapped into various characters across languages—Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, and English. “It’s not easy for somebody to do something different every time. Having said that, I don’t think there’s any tangible preparation. I imbibe it over a period. I read the script and mark nodal points that I know I want to perform in a particular way. When you read the script repeatedly, it tells you how the character graph needs to go and what you need to do at any given point,” Madhavan says about his process.

But it’s not just languages that Madhavan experiments with; it’s the medium as well. While his acting career began on television in the early 1990s, the actor has since worked on theatrical movies as well as straight-to-streaming releases. Does the medium pose a challenge, I ask.

“Anybody who underestimates the difference between these three mediums is going to make the last mistake of their career,” he says. “Acting in cinema is very different from acting in a movie on OTT. The cinematography, lighting, sound, technique, pacing… everything changes. The Railway Men, for instance, was meant for OTT as a series. If you made it as a movie, the whole process of depicting the story would have changed. When you’re shooting 10 episodes of an hour each, you’re making 10 hours of content. It’s an extremely demanding job! You need to draw the episodic and series graphs. [Whereas] as a film actor, you do a maximum of three hours, so I only need to keep those hours of character graph in mind.”

The challenge increased manifold during Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, a multilingual biographical drama film based on the life of Nambi Narayanan, a scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation. For this theatrical release, Madhavan not only portrayed the protagonist but also took on the roles of writer, producer, and director. The hurdles must have been monumental, I exclaim. The multi-hyphenate agrees.

“[The project] didn’t make sense from the word ‘go’. There was no rationale as to how I would have to deal with any of those challenges, including directing for the first time, producing it, or writing it. But I did it all for that one man I met, and for whom I made the film. His story was so inspirational and powerful that I couldn’t stop dreaming about it. It became an obsession,” he says.

As the cover shoot stretches into its second hour, I find myself yearning for a cozy nap. However, the actor has different plans. While we prepare for the next photograph, Madhavan’s team informs me that later today, his latest supernatural horror thriller film, Shaitaan, will be premiering.

I hear the click of the camera again. Madhavan’s eyes are sparkling; his signature smile undeterred by the flash or the nerves of a new release. I wonder what the secret to his calm demeanour is. Laughing, he reveals, “I’m nervous as hell! I just go with the flow—it’s inevitable, so enjoy it while you can. But I get over it quickly. Irrespective of the outcome, it takes two days. Then I go back to feeling nervous about my next project.”

The Man Behind The Persona

With his schedules stripped of breathers, I wonder how he balances his professional and personal lives. “I have an easy solution to this—I lean on my wife, Sarita! She does a great job of balancing that and gives me the freedom to do my work. She handles our finances, manages the staff, takes care of our son…it’s not easy. I’m very grateful to her.”

I go on a limb and ask about their first date. The romantic in Madhavan gets excited. “Sarita was from Mumbai. While I was teaching a course on Public Speaking & Communication Skills in Kolhapur, she came to Kolhapur for the holidays. Her cousin was in one of my classes. Sarita was very irritated with her sister as she was spending four hours in a class! So, she came to one of the classes to see who this guy was, and ended up joining the class. While we didn’t date when I was her teacher, once she graduated and became an air hostess, we met up again for dinner. It was one hell of a long dinner!”

Their love has since taken them on many adventures together. The couple shared their maiden First Class experience on a flight while travelling for the shoot of Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein. “That was when we first thought I had gotten successful”. Now these travels are more planned. He says, “All the planning is done by Sunita— the destination, tickets, flights…everything!” Irrespective of who plans, Madhavan thinks travel is extremely important. “Although it teaches you a lot about the world, it teaches you a lot about yourself too. I often Google the best restaurants near me, museums to visit, or even adventure sports I could experience.” No wonder he knows where to find the best panipuri, I think to myself.

The camera clicks for the last time. The traffic of Juhu has resurfaced, the once tense atmosphere has now been swept away by the ocean breeze. As for me, I’ve once again fallen for the charismatic actor.

Related: Creepy Settings Of Shaitaan: Explore The Horror Flick’s Eerie Filming Locations

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