A career in cinema was a natural choice for Kalyani Priyadarshan, given the fact that she grew up spending her summer vacations on the sets of the films her father (Priyadarshan) directed and also watched her mother’s (Lissy) films. “I have these memories of watching my dad thoroughly enjoying his work and I would have so much fun on the sets. When my holidays ended and it was time to go back to school, I would feel a bit lost,” Kalyani remembers, talking to MetroPlus ahead of her second Telugu film Chitralahari, which is scheduled to release this Friday.

She always knew she wanted to work in films, but she wasn’t sure in what capacity. Before she could make that decision, she had to have a good academic background: “My dad felt I should give education priority since it will help me think better and differently from others,” Kalyani recalls.

So she studied in Singapore, during which time she also pursued theatre and learnt the basics of acting, directing and stage production. Later while pursuing architecture at Parson School of Design, New York, she worked backstage for a few Broadway shows. “I was still figuring out where I would belong,” she says.

When she finally decided to become an actor, she thought she would ideally debut in languages she knew best — Malayalam or Tamil. But Vikram Kumar narrated the story of Hello and she couldn’t say no. “I never thought I would debut in a Telugu film; it was my destiny to take up a film that, incidentally, was about destiny,” she laughs. Hello released in December 2017 and till date, Kalyani is addressed by her character name ‘junnu’ by some of her social media followers.

A year and four months later, she’s eager to see the response for her second Telugu film, Chitralahari. “I think young girls will be able to relate to my character. I learnt Telugu and dubbed for my part. There was a lot of help and I liked the way director Kishore Tirumala writes his dialogues. It’s almost poetic and the essence of it is lost if you try and rearrange the words,” she explains.

Thinking ahead

In the last one year, Kalyani has also been working on another Telugu film — a gangster drama directed by Sudheer Varma and co-starring Sharwanand — apart from shooting for her Tamil debut directed by P S Mithran and co-starring Sivakarthikeyan. “Sudheer’s film took some time because it shifts between two time periods. The Tamil film is a complete commercial entertainer,” she says. She’s also part of the Tamil film Maanaadu, directed by Venkat Prabhu and headlined by Silambarasan. “I look for diversity in roles. When I look back 20 years later, I should have a few films that I’m truly proud of,” she remarks. That, she says, was also a reason for her to do a “small part” in the Malayalam film Marakkar: Arabikadalinte Simham, directed by Priyadarshan and starring Mohanlal, set in the 16th century during Portugese invasion.

Kalyani has grown up watching her father and Mohanlal work together in a number of films and has observed the spontaneity in Mohanlal’s acting: “Dad would tell me that you’d never know what to expect when Mohanlal is in front of the camera. His is a different approach from someone like, say, Aamir Khan who rehearses and makes only minute changes in each take.” What then, is her approach to acting? “If it’s a Telugu film where I’m still learning the nuances of the language, I learn my lines thoroughly and do what my director tells me. In Tamil and Malayalam, I’m a lot more spontaneous. I’m still in the early stages of my career and seeing what works for me; it will also vary from director to director.”

Before we end, I ask if her education (in architecture) does indeed help her think differently on a film set. Kalyani is quick to bring in a correlation of space: “Architecture teaches you to observe how a human being moves and design a space accordingly; as an actor, I think how a certain character would move and the body language is designed accordingly. In that respect, there’s similarity.”