‘FOR ME, LIFE CAN BE DIVIDED INTO BEFORE AND AFTER BAAHUBALI’
Sathyaraj says thanks to his character Katappa in Baahubali, people across the world know him now
Why did Katappa kill Baahubali — this one question took the nation by storm when Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) released. And it not only immortalised the characters, but also the actor who played Katappa — Sathyaraj.
“For me, life can be divided into life before and after Baahubali. Before this film, people only knew me in the south, or wherever Tamilians lived in the world. But after this character happened, everybody knew me,” he laughs.
The 67-year-old, who will be seen in the Tamil remake of Badhaai Ho (2018) next, says the one question he gets often is, ‘How tough was it to keep the answer to the question (why did Katappa kill Baahubali?) a secret until the film released?’ The actor quips, “Well, the producer paid me well, and SS Rajamouli (director) asked me to do it, that’s why I did it and kept the answer a secret.”
In a career spanning 44 years, Sathyaraj has acted in nearly 250 films. He shares, “Most of my films are in Tamil, I did three films in Telugu, two in Malayalam, and one in Hindi, director Rohit Shetty’s Chennai Express (2013).”
Ask why he didn’t take up more work in Hindi after his Bollywood debut, and he confesses, “I do get Hindi offers. I was offered a Tiger Shroff (actor) film recently, which required me to be 40 days in London (UK). My family situation is such that I can’t go abroad for those many days. Then there was a film with (actor) Vidya Balan, but on the same dates as the one required by Veetla Vishesham. The problem is that I speak fluently only in my mother tongue (Tamil), even English I barely manage.”