The New Indian Express: Chennai: Wednesday, 30 April
2014.
He lives in
Bangalore, but started his film career with a Malayalam flick, Notebook. Now,
after several Kannada, Malayalam and the four-language film Charulatha, actor
Skanda is back on Tamil screen with Angusam, releasing this week. In a chat
with CE, the actor reveals why the film is so special for him on both the
personal and professional fronts.
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| Actor Skanda |
“Angusam is
the film I signed first in Tamil. But since director and producer Manukannan
was based in Dubai, the shooting took longer than expected. Meanwhile, I signed
up for Charulatha, opposite Priyamani, which became my first release in Tamil.
But Angusam will always be special for me for many reasons,” says Skanda.
He plays a
rural boy, Siva, who uses the Right to Information Act (RTI) to help the
backward village he hails from. His sacrifices and the problems he faces from
corrupt officials and politicians form the story. For Skanda, the film was a revelation and a learning process. “I
didn’t know much about the RTI Act before I heard the script. But the idea
interested me immensely and I accepted it (the project). After that I did some
reading on the subject. During the making, I got to learn a lot more about the
power of such an Act. The film is an eye-opener for the common man and it shows
how much power he can wield to get the change he wants in society. I’m really
honoured to be part of Angusam,” he says.
Skanda also
has a personal reason to be happy about. His maternal grandfather H G Govinde Gowda, a freedom fighter, widely
known as Malnad Gandhi in Karnataka, was happy that Skanda was doing a film
with a social conscience. “He usually doesn’t show much interest in my film
career. But when he heard that the movie showed the RTI Act being used to weed
out corruption, he was very happy. So, on the personal front also, Angusam
brought me deep satisfaction,” he says. Ask him about the challenges of the
role and he laughs and says, “It’s the first time I’m playing a rural boy. In
my other films like Notebook, Positive and Electra, and in the Kannada films, I
never played a village boy. So for Angusam, I had to observe and learn from the
youngsters in villages near Ulundurpet where we shot.” Apart from the hurricane
that affected the shooting badly, Skanda had to contend with the severe 48
degrees heat wave in the area. Another tough part was doing the stunts. He
says, “I had to do a lot of running and get beaten up for the candid shots. In
one of the scenes, I got injured on my face when a splinter from a Plaster of
Paris bench hit me inadvertently.”
About the
future, he says, “I want to do more Tamil films. They have good scripts along
with the right mix of commercial elements.”
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