Ramya Pandian: One good commercial break will change things for me
(Originally published in The Hindu on March 07, 2023)
Ramya Pandian says that she is an actor who takes inspiration from everything she watches and comes across. “When I watch ‘80s films, I get inspired by actors like Saritha ma’am and Revathi ma’am. And when I watched the recently-released Ayali, I was so moved by what that little girl Abi Nakshatra did.” So, when she got to know that she was about to act with a veteran like Mammootty, who has a staggering 400+ films to his name, in Lijo Jose Pellissery’s recent sensation Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, saying yes was a no-brainer.
It was during the shoot of her upcoming Sony LIV web series Accidental Farmer & Co that Lijo called Ramya for Nanpakal. “I didn’t understand why he wanted to cast me. After the film, I asked him and he said that I just fit the role perfectly.”
In the film, Ramya plays Poongulazhi, a Tamil single mother whose husband Sundaram disappeared mysteriously two years ago. Just when things seem normal again, her life is jolted when a Malayali man named James (Mammootty) enters her home, claims to be her husband, and behaves as if it was just another day.
Meanwhile, for James’s wife Sally, played by Ramya Suvi, the fear is about losing her husband forever. There are many such dualities in Nanpakal. “In fact, at the International Film Festival of Kerala premiere, the crowd applauded the shot in which you see both wives in the same frame — where Poongulazhi is near the window inside the house and Sally, outside on the adjacent house’s thinnai, and their children enter the frame at the same time.”
Nanpakal isn’t just about what these two characters are experiencing, but more about
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