Amala Paul’s favourite quote is: ‘Either you can fit in or you can change the world.’ It’s a quote she repeats in many interviews, and something she often tells her friends. “At least I’ll try changing the world,” she says, sitting at an office that has a big poster of her wielding a broomstick with the words ‘Welcome to the World of Kamini’.
This is clearly Amala Paul 2.0. The reticence she had during her first foray into cinema is long gone, and the message she’s trying to send to audiences, and the film industry, is loud and clear: that she wants to be an actor, and not just a heroine.
This realisation happened sometime during 2017-2018. It was the phase when her Tamil projects (Thiruttu Payale 2, Bhaskar Oru Rascal and Ratsasan) hit screens, with only the third film doing good business. “I went through a phase of deep introspection. I realised that while doing films back to back, I was getting burnt out and not concentrating on quality. I wasn’t preparing for my role and was working like a machine. When I saw the result on the big screen, I felt that the work I’d done was horrible.”
- Cadaver, in which she plays a pathologist. “It was like studying for MBBS,” she laughs. Amala spent weeks at the Government General Hospital, Chennai, and at mortuaries preparing for the role.
- Adho Andha Paravai Pola, an action film that’s complete and due for release.
- Aadujeevitham, a Malayalam film directed by Blessy and based on a novel. She co-stars with Prithviraj in this film that has music by AR Rahman.
She felt disheartened, so much that she felt the need to quit the industry. “I kept waiting. Scripts came along, but they were usually the big-hero films, and I kept declining them,” she recalls. Filmmakers slowly started taking note, and pitched ‘women-centric’ subjects to her. “But even those were clichéd. Like a woman taking revenge for her loved one’s death, or making an effort to change society. I did not feel like taking them up.”
That was when director Rathna Kumar’s Aadai script landed on her table. “There was truth in the story,” she says, “It reflected what was happening in society. I believe that cinema should be a reflection of current society, not the society of the Seventies and Eighties. Though there is a wave of new directors, a majority of them are still primitive.”
A still from 'Aadai'
Rathna, she believes, is different. “The way he wrote my character (Kamini) stood out. Kamini had a lot of grey, which, I believe, is the richest colour in cinema. We mostly get black and white kind of roles – either she’s a good, cute girl or she’s the villi. Kamini was grey, and she’s unapologetically herself.”
In Kamini, Amala saw someone that she herself used to be back in college. By that, she means “mad, crazy and weird”. It was a relief that she had a director who let her be, rather than tell her how to be. “A majority of the actors today are out to please people,” she feels, “If I wear clothes like this, will the audience accept me? If I have a scene like this, will the audience connect with me? That’s why heroines have ‘typical’ introduction scenes and mandatory ‘sentimental’ sequences.”
Coffee days ahead
All this didn’t mean Aadai was all fun. Amala had to be disciplined – working out and preparing for the role – and what she ate mattered. It helped that she was in a “yoga zone”, but not all the time. “I can’t drink coffee because as per Ayurveda, I have a pitta body type. This means I am fire, and coffee means more fire.” But Amala had to drink a lot of coffee to push herself because while she was all calm and meditative, thanks to yoga, Kamini was all hyper. “I just couldn’t finish the shoot and go back home and stay calm. I took Kamini back home, and that was mentally taxing. Many days, I had to meditate just to get sleep.”
Aadai releases on a month when there are multiple woman-championed flicks, including Jyotika’s Raatchasi, Samantha’s Oh! Baby and Nayanthara’s Kolaiyuthir Kaalam. “When people look at Aadai’s posters and say that I’ve attempted something bold, it actually reflects me being secure about myself. All the heroines today are trying to change the way movies are being made, in their own ways. Luckily, Nayanthara is a pioneer – because her women-centric scripts worked at the box office. It’s amazing that audiences are accepting them, and they are doing it because the content is good.”
Why Mynaa matters
Amala’s performance in 2010’s Mynaa, when she was just 18, made heads turn so much that she is still remembered for it. Some people still call her ‘Mynaa Amala Paul’ and that’s something she has mulled about often. “I thought that it was a shame that they don’t recall the characters I have played in my 9-year career after Mynaa,” she says. So one day recently, on a whim, she played the film in her home theatre in Kochi. “I realised that I was doing method acting without even knowing what it was. I tried repeating my expressions in front of a mirror, but it didn’t come out. Probably it was because that there were no expectations from me back then.”
A decade post that, there are expectations from her. Aadai is among the most anticipated films of the year, especially because of its shocking teaser in which Amala wakes up completely naked inside an office. “I don’t want to go into how exactly that was shot,” she says hesitatingly, “But I told the 15 people on set then that like Panchali who had five husbands, I had 15 husbands now, and that I needed their trust. That cracked them up, and we ended up filming a good sequence.”
Amala Paul in 'Aadai'
That sequence might have turned many heads, but Amala insists there’s much more to Aadai. “I am confident about it,” she smiles, “Starting from now, I want to be part of projects that value me as an artiste. I need to have a certain chemistry with the director, which means I cannot work with ego maniacs or filmmakers who think movies are full of masala.”