Actor Chetan has no qualms revealing that despite playing the late Tamil Nadu CM 'Arignar' CN Annadurai in Parasakthi, he doesn't share much screen space with the lead actors of the film. His confidence stems from the fact that he believes his scenes are some of the most powerful segments in Parasakthi. "When Sudha Kongara gave me a brief about the role, I felt both responsible and scared. I took it upon myself to give my best. When dubbing for the film, Sudha pointed to a particular scene where she said she had goosebumps and felt as though she was seeing Anna in real life," he begins.
While Chetan isn't new to the period setting, courtesy of his starring role in Vetri Maaran's Viduthalai 1 and 2, he asserts that the Parasakthi experience was a rather unique one. "I'd have to make myself believe that I was stepping into the shoes of one of the greatest personalities of Tamil Nadu," says Chetan, who also points out that there weren't many video clips of the Dravidian stalwart for him to understand what it takes to be the doyen of the State. "From whatever was available, I absorbed every little aspect like a sponge, and started to mentally feel like Anna. Apart from Sudha's inputs, I also did my own research into his personality, and imbibed his journey and his undying spirit."
Elaborating on the research materials he obtained about Anna, Chetan talks about a particularly compelling incident that cemented his resolve to play the leader. "I heard from a friend's father that the Congress was one mighty, undaunted force of a political party, whose leaders, back then, would not even campaign ahead of elections. I was told that a Congressperson would inform a village's leader to tell the people to vote for the party, and that's that. This story is also a telltale of the minimal to non-existent opposition. Imagine someone floats a party from scratch to oppose this massive force," says Chetan, as he goes on to explain how his admiration for Anna grew with every little thing he learnt about him. "With the tiny wiggle room of door-to-door grassroots campaigns coupled with pride in regional and linguistic identity, Anna turned the tables and changed the course of Tamil Nadu politics forever. Imagine you are being offered his role and you come to know these many great things about him. In my preparation, I started telling myself that 'I am someone who fought for a really just and noble cause,' and it gradually made me confident in playing the role."
To bridge the absence of video documentation of Anna, Chetan reveals he took the help of the late actor-filmmaker SS Stanley, who played the former CM in the Sathyaraj-starrer Periyar (2007). "We had a lot of conversations about how he prepared, and that helped a lot, and the other gaps were taken care of by Sudha," says Chetan, adding, "Sudha is one of the few directors who does extensive research into a film's subject. She ensured that I never got confused with anything in my role. I am not sure how she goes about her writing, but I think her in-depth research would have helped in a seamless screenplay process."
Boasting an acting career of over three decades, Chetan humbly says that one can never master the skill of acting. "Learning a new thing about acting every day is the most fascinating aspect of the skill. Not a single shoot day of mine has passed without me regretting before sleep, 'Damn! I should have done this differently.' With Parasakthi, I learned that not just displaying your acting prowess, sometimes even tempering it down, can hone your performance," he says, quipping that introducing improvisations into a character with a well-recorded history might not be the smartest thing to do. "Any amount of improvisation would have done the role a disservice. Improvisations are for the kind of roles I did in films like Viduthalai, where I play a cop, of whom, other than him being a sycophant of the system, nothing much is known," signs off Chetan, who strongly believes that the positivity he felt being a part of Parasakthi will also be the result of the film after the release. "Playing someone as powerful as Anna doesn't often happen to an actor, right?"