Two years after she turned heads with her Tamil theatrical debut, Lover, Sri Gouri Priya is back with Happy Raj, in which she stars alongside GV Prakash Kumar. But the actor is still not done receiving praise for Lover. “Last month, around the anniversary of the film’s release, social media was flooded with edits and discussions, and I read every write-up and watched every video that came my way. It was a pleasant surprise seeing how Lover continues to thrive in our collective memory,” says the actor. As Gouri recounts, a thought makes her pause and chuckle. “People have a mature outlook about the film now, but when it came out, a lot of the audience bashed my character. But that is okay. At the end, Arun is a successful entrepreneur, and Divya is a successful IT professional. They are both happy and have moved on,” she smiles.
Her nonchalance quickly melts as she admits to being initially surprised by the audience's reaction to her character. “I was actually surprised when people said Divya was toxic. I’m not saying she’s a perfect person, but she was tolerating a lot more before she ultimately decided to end things. She has been with Arun for six years, and Arun was extremely clingy, so it was not an easy decision for her to make." Getting into specifics, Gouri dissects the climax sequence in which Arun and Divya chance upon each other years after the breakup. “When Divya leaves Arun, he is a mess, but when they accidentally meet each other after years, he is doing his dream job. Even though they barely exchange any dialogues, the audience started cheering, taking Divya’s surprised reaction to mean that she is regretting her decision, after seeing her ex doing well in life. There is no regret or ill will. She is just surprised to see him there. Arun was not in Divya’s life for a long time, and she has moved on. But there was a lot of anxiety. She was probably a little hesitant, not knowing how to open the conversation. Then, the waiter passes by saying “Good morning, sir”, and that’s when she realises he has made it. Maybe if they didn’t break up, he wouldn’t have succeeded.” Gouri credits her deep understanding of her character’s inner life to her director, Prabhu Ram Vyas, who made his debut with Lover. Her upcoming film, Happy Raj, is also made by a debutant, Maria Raja Elanchezian. “Debutants are doing some amazing work in Tamil cinema in the last few years. I loved J Baby, Lubber Pandhu, and Tourist Family.” On a slightly unrelated note, Gouri goes on a tangent fangirling over Urvashi’s performance in J Baby. And then she goes on another tangent. “I know it's not made by a debutant filmmaker, but since we are talking about recent Tamil films, I would like to go on record as being a big fan of Thiruchitrambalam.”
As Gouri describes loving the way Thiruchitrambalam tackled the friends-to-lovers trope in a breezy yet grounded manner, one wonders if that is the kind of film she would like to do next. “I don’t want to think about what I want. I want to be surprised as an actor. In Modern Love Chennai, I play a Telugu ponnu (girl) from North Madras. I don’t know how Prabhu Ram Vyas saw that and thought I could do Divya in Lover. That’s the kind of surprise I’m talking about,” she says. But are surprises such a rare occurrence for an actor to covet? Gouri stresses how stereotyping and typecasting are still major issues in the film industry. She says, “Once you do a de-glammed character, then that’s all you get. Once they saw me in Modern Love Chennai, they thought I couldn’t do urban characters. For Prabhu Ram Vyas to look past all the makeup and setting to see my performance, and envision me as Divya in Lover, is a skill on its own.” The actor believes that such stereotyping and typecasting stem from an inability to separate reality and fiction. “After watching me in Modern Love Chennai, when people met me in real life, they asked, ‘How are you not dark?’ I was taken aback and didn’t know how to respond,” says Gouri.
Perhaps this is why some actors prefer to stay active on social media, to show people that they are more than just the characters they portray. But Gouri Priya doesn’t buy into the theory that social media affects the kind of roles you are offered. “I am not against social media. I just don’t take it seriously. I believe work gets work. I got Lover because of Modern Love Chennai, and I got Happy Raj and Ravi Mohan’s Bro Code because of my work in Lover.” Speaking of Happy Raj, Gouri says she is excited to play a lighthearted “bubbly” character in Tamil. “Happy Raj is a complete package. I play a North Indian girl, who is not an emotionally draining character like Divya. It is a fun film, and I’m curious to see what kind of roles I attract after that.” Even as she wonders about what’s in store, Sri Gouri Priya is clear about what she wants. “While choosing films, I don’t think like an actor. I just ask myself if I would go watch that film, and everything you see me in is just my preference as an audience.”