Actor Vijay Sethupathi is one of the name synonymous with doing experimental roles in the mainstream space in the Tamil film industry.
Vijay’s performance was included in the Film Companion’s ‘100 Greatest Performances of the Decade’ list for ‘Super Deluxe.’
He played the role of a transwomen in the Telugu hyper-linked flick ‘Super Deluxe’, directed by Thiagarajan Kumararaja. It had four different stories linked to one another in some way.
Sethupathi’s performance and the film met with critical acclaim. The film also received the Equality in Cinema Award at the 2019 Indian Film Festival of Melbourne.
Recently, he, along with other actors like Manoj Bajpayee, Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Vijay Devarakonda, Parvathy Thiruvothu and Ayushmann Khurrana with film critic Anupama Chopra to discuss about his craft.
Sethupathi said to Anupama that he agreed to do the film after reading a line in the screenplay where his son asks him why he wasn’t born as a female.
“That scene was written so well which is why I decided that I don’t want to miss this film. [..] So I told [the director Thiagarajan Kumararaja] that you don’t need to pay me any money, I just want to do this film.”
Sethupathi mentioned that on the first day of the shoot, it took he almost 50-60 takes to get into the character. “Then I finally realised a female inside me, then I got a confidence.”
He was recently seen in the action drama ‘Sangathamizhan’ directed by Vijay Chandar and co-starring Rashi Khanna. It met with mostly mixed reviews with praise for Vijay’s performance.
Watch the full interview: