Dushara Vijayan might just be your quintessential Tamil ponnu. Hailing from Dindigul, she has portrayed a teacher from Kanyakumari, a shopkeeper from Madurai, and a headstrong woman from Madras, all in stories which are indulgent with their respective settings. With her latest crime drama, Exam, which is streaming on Prime Video, she enters the world created by director Sarkunam, who uses geography as a prominent character in his works. In this interview with CE, Dushara talks about connecting with her childhood working on this series, the positive challenges that she enjoys while acting, and making her debut with Vijay’s Sarkar (2018).
Excerpts:
This is the first time you are playing a police officer in your career. How was it to see you in the khaki...
The reason behind my dream to be an actor, is my interest in wanting to portray the lives of various characters. While the character can have a pre-written backstory, I love the challenge of breathing life into those characters. So for Exam, I felt a renewed sense of confidence, seeing myself in that crisp police officer’s uniform. My parents wished for me to become a bureaucrat, and see me in a uniform. So, they were happy to see me in Exam, and I was very grateful.
Exam also features you in a new action avatar. How was it performing stunts on the series?
I am always game for performing stunts. It is not like you are doing it in reality, right? Despite doing Raayan, stunts are still a new thing for me. Aditi and I had to rehearse for three days, for the fight scenes in the car, and I definitely had fun with it.
Speaking about Aditi, both of you had very little scenes together. But could you talk about sharing screen space with her?
I see Aditi as a healthy competition. I am able to observe and learn a lot from her. Seeing two female energies in a single frame was new for me, but it was also nice, as it was a space that encouraged creative collaboration. You depend on your co-actor in certain ways, as you jump off from their performances into yours. In that way, working with her was a great experience.
How was it like working with someone like Abbas, who you grew up watching on the screen...
The Abbas I remember was Arun from Kadhal Desam (1996). All of us might remember him from that or Minnale (2001) or any of his work from that era. So on set, seeing him in character for Exam, was a unique experience, as it was a stark contrast from any of those characters that we remember. I have had the privilege of working with Rajinikanth sir, Vikram sir, Dhanush sir pretty early in my career, which takes me back to the memories of watching them on screen for the first time. And now having acted with Abbas sir, and currently with Madhavan sir on GDN, the GD Naidu biopic, makes me feel like I am on the sets of Minnale (2001).
While you had a lot of positive challenges in terms of stunts or acting alongside established performers, what other aspects of Exam made you want to work on it?
There is a flashback sequence which connected with me a lot. I enjoy nature a lot, and the way the environment came together for that scene, including a row of ducks, made it particularly beautiful. On the whole, I was very happy working on this series.
Also I lived out a lot of my childhood in this series. I grew up in a village, so sometimes I would be woken up by ducks pecking on my face. Even other little things like braiding my hair with a ribbon, or cooking on a viragu aduppu (firewood stove), took me back to my childhood. But I also got over my fear of water bodies, as learning to do a variety of stunts meant getting over my fear of water bodies. When I was young I almost drowned, while swimming, so getting over that fear was a good challenge.
After breaking out as an actor you have worked with big stars, surprisingly your debut was in Vijay’s Sarkar…
Working on Sarkar was an accident, because I went to a coffee shop with my uncle. It so happened that a junior artist wasn’t available, so an AD asked me to sit in for a scene. But more than me, it was my uncle who proudly declared that he was in a Vijay film. When asked what role he played, he would have to sheepishly explain that he was behind me wiping down cups and various crockery.
But as a person who was always interested in acting and pursuing a career in cinema, it was always exciting to say that my first film was a Vijay film.