Director Joshiy's Twenty:20 is one of the biggest hits of Malayalam cinema of the noughties. The film brought together many big stars of the industry, including Mohanlal, Mammootty, Dileep, Jayaram, and Suresh Gopi, among others. Dileep produced Twenty:20 to help AMMA association come out of a financial crisis.
One of the notable aspects of the film is the absence of Jayaram's character from its final scene, where the main stars can be seen walking in slow-motion. While he is there in the poster, his character is not present in the film's final moment. Recently, the actor gave an explanation for his omission from the Twenty:20 climax shot and has since been facing much criticism for it.
In an interview with Truly Ram, Jayaram said that he opted out of the climax shot so that he could go to Chennai and celebrate Diwali with his family. The actor explained that he asked Joshiy to speed up the shoot so that he could return home quickly and that the director delayed it by a couple of days, making him opt out of the climax.
However, the actor told a similar story in a previous interview with some modifications. Only, in the other interview, he attributed his decision to a need to visit the Sabarimala Temple. Netizens have since been criticising the actor for his contradictory accounts and questioning his integrity. According to them, this is symptomatic of an actor choosing to say what the audience in the particular region wants to hear. The actor's critics say that he told the story with Diwali in Chennai and Sabarimala Temple in Kerala to cater to the sentiments of the audience in the respective regions.
It could be that the actor does not want to reveal the actual reason for his absence from the Twenty:20 climatic moment to avoid controversy over it. However, his detractors have also latched onto the actor's comments in light of what he said about his absence from the late Sreenivasan's funeral function. At the time, the actor said that he could not attend the function because he was part of a film shoot in Chennai. Now, his critics are calling him out for his apparent hypocrisy.
