R Madhavan: ‘Never asked a producer my picture’s size on a poster’

Once in a while, actors come across scripts that they know will be a legacy film. To R Madhavan, that happened with director Karan Singh Tyagi’s Kesari Chapter 2. “It’s a film that will transcend time. Rang De Basanti [2006] was one of them, 3 Idiots [2009] too. You get the feeling in your bones. During 3 Idiots, I told Raju [Rajkumar Hirani] that he will have a tough time trying to beat this one. The same goes for Karan Singh Tyagi,” grins the actor.

In Kesari Chapter 2, the director offers a dramatised version of history with Akshay Kumar’s C Sankaran Nair fighting the British Raj’s attempt to underplay their role in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Madhavan plays Neville McKinley, the lawyer representing the Crown. His character may not be at the front and centre of the narrative, but fits perfectly with Madhavan’s pursuit of meaningful stories, regardless of his screen time. He explains, “I want to be a pixel of a larger story. If the story works, all of us benefit. I don’t take my stardom seriously, which is why I do the kind of films I do. If I took it seriously, I’d want to know my screen [time], or who’s standing in front of me. You can ask any of my producers. I’ve never asked them, ‘What’s the size of my picture on the poster?’”

The senior actor walked into the period drama knowing that it was being made “for the right reasons”. His belief was further strengthened by Kumar’s involvement. He recalls, “Two weeks before the release, Akshay sir called me at 4 am. He said, ‘Our clash is going well, but in the end, my character wins fair and square. I don’t want you to be the guy who is forgotten.’ He wanted a closure scene. He flew down from Chennai, I did from Dubai. We shot it two weeks before the release. When people are going out of their way to do a job, you know it’s a special project.”

At this stage of his career, Madhavan’s attempt is to find movies with “soul”. “I’ve never seen the audience wait till the last credit rolls, [which happened here]. A film gets a destiny when the final edit is done. There could be a big film that doesn’t have a soul. At other times, it could be a small film done for the right reasons, and boom, it becomes a Tanu Weds Manu, or this.”