Dulquer Salmaan, who plays veteran star Gemini Ganesan in the upcoming Telugu-Tamil bilingual biopic, Nadigaiyar Thilagam (Mahanati in Telugu), says it has been a long-pending desire of his to be part of a period film.

“Amazing periods are being captured in films and even in TV series in the West. For long, I have desired to be part of a period drama. Unfortunately, in the Malayalam film industry, we don’t have huge budgets to make such films. Nadigaiyar Thilagam is being made on a massive scale, and I’m lucky to be part of this project,” Dulquer says.

Talking about the project being directed by Nag Ashwin, the actor says he is thrilled to be working with a young team. “Both the director and the producer are younger than me. It’s a young team with so much energy. I have always been against the idea of bilinguals, but it made a lot of sense to make this film in two languages,” he adds.

Dulquer doesn’t think he will try to play Gemini Ganesan true to life. “There’s no off-screen footage of him. We don’t know what kind of person he was off-screen. We only know his persona on screen and I can’t use that to play him,” he says, adding that he will also not be made to look like him. “I can’t, honestly, and I don’t want to wear prosthetics. My approach is simple. I will be playing myself in the 1950s had I been a big movie star then,” he adds.

The film, which stars Keerthy Suresh as Savitri, also has Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Prakash Raj, Mohan Babu and Vijay Devarakonda as part of the cast.