UAE: Vijay Sethupathi opens up on 'Master' and his early days in Dubai

Vijay Sethupathi is an actor without prejudices. The South Indian star can be seen as a young romantic middle-class hero (96, Pizza, Andavan Kattalai etc.), a very old protagonist (Orange mittayi, Seetha kathi), an action hero (Sethupathi, Gavan, Karuppan), a transwoman who is the father of a small kid (Super Deluxe), doing guest roles and what not. At the same time, he never hesitates to share the screen with others in multi-starrer movies (Chekka Chevantha Vanam with Aravind Swamy, Vikram Vedha with R Madhavan, Petta with Rajinikanth).

His most recent movie appearance was as Bhavani, the villain in Thalapathy Vijay starrer Master, which is now running successfully in cinemas across the world and is also streaming on Amazon Prime Video. In the first weeks of the release itself, even with the capacity restrictions due to Covid-19, Master collected more than Rs250 crore from cinemas alone.

Sethupathi, who has acted in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam movies, is now entering Bollywood. He shared the poster of a silent movie, Gandhi Talks, and the announcement of his Bollywood debut in Santhosh Sivan’s Mumbaikar was made earlier. Now, he revealed that he will be acting alongside Katrina Kaif in Andhadhun fame Sriram Raghavan’s new movie. “I’m also doing a Hindi web series with Shahid Kapoor, which is being made by the directors of Amazon Prime series The Family Man,” says Sethupathi.

Vijay Sethupathi, who is known among his thousands of fans as Makkal Selvan (people’s man), was in Dubai for a private event where City Times managed to catch up with him. He talked in detail about films and the days he worked in Dubai as an accountant almost two decades ago.

Of course, the talk started with Bhavani of Master, whom critics praised more than the hero. However, Sethupathi is of no such opinion. “The director had a soul for Bhavani and then he was looking for a body to play that role. Initially, he was hesitant to ask me and a common friend told me that Lokesh (the director) is hesitant. I called him up and heard the one-liner and told him that I wanted to play the role.”

He says sharing screen with co-star Vijay was a pleasure for him. “Vijay was the first person to appreciate me while doing the movie. He even clapped when I performed. It was because of him the movie came out like this. I respect him a lot.”

For Sethupathi, being a hero doesn’t mean he needs to do solo roles only. “I’m a star or actor because of my cinema, because of the stories they tell the audience. So, I respect my work and that means I do what the roles require from me.”

anuwarrier@khaleejtimes.com