Divya nervous about another acting debut, 29 years after her first
I asked Resul, ‘How much Malayalam will you make me speak?’ and he said, ‘A little bit, for sure’. DIVYA DUTTA, Actor
After close to three decades of starring in Hindi and Punjabi films, actor Divya Dutta has set her sights on Malayalam films. She is gearing up for a biopic to be helmed by Resul Pookutty, Oscar-winning sound designer who is directing his first film.
“I am nervous making a debut after all these years,” she says. “Resul is a friend; he is making a biopic on someone who ran away from his home three times and got at least 35,000 children reunited with their families. He lives in Mumbai and his wife was Punjabi. Resul called me a year ago to say, ‘Whenever I make this film, you will star in it’. I asked, ‘How much Malayalam will you make me speak?’ and he said, ‘A little bit, for sure’,” the 45-year-old laughs.
She is not familiar with the language, she admits. “I needed to be absolutely correct; I would keep mugging up my dialogues. It was interesting to pick up an accent, and I think I came back from the shoot with one too. Expression and art forms, as they say, have no language. Once I knew what the line meant, I would mug it up and deliver the line. On set, if I faced some difficulty, Resul would say, ‘Let’s do it later’, or let me do it in takes, but then immediately afterwards he would tell me to do it again anyway,” laughs Dutta.
The appreciation for cinema from the southern film industries has grown after projects such as Baahubali (2015). Dutta is glad that divides between film industries are on their way out. “Yes, there were boundaries, ki ‘Yeh Punjab ki film hai, yeh Bengali film hai’. But with OTT gradually coming in, I have so many friends who watch Malayalam films. They watch other South films with equal enthusiasm. It doesn’t feel ki kuchh alag dekh liya,” the actor wraps up.