Nithya Menen: I broke down when Dhanush called me for the National Award

Winning the National Award was an emotional experience for Nithya Menen, who was flooded with an overwhelming feeling. Her Thiruchitrambalam co-star Dhanush, called her to break the news of her National Award honour and it caught the actress off-guard. In a candid conversation with Filmfare, Nithya recalls how many years of hard work and dedication resulted in this honour. Read on to figure out more and to see how Nithya is a proud Bangalore girl with a passion for many languages.

What was your first reaction when Thiruchitrambalam was narrated to you or when you read the script/story? 

Thiruchitrambalam was different because it was pitched by Dhanush. He called me very frantic, and he said, ‘Why am I not able to reach you? Why are you so difficult to reach?’ I’ve always been a little bit difficult to reach and aloof. Nobody shares my number.

Dhanush said, “Why have you and I not done a film? Why is it so hard to reach you?’ He was very frantic. I said ‘Okay. It’s fine.’ Dhanush explained that the actors were most important. He said, ‘When we first thought about this (casting for Thiruchitrambalam), I had four people in my mind and I’ve been fighting to get these four people on board and that’s why I was trying to reach you.’ Dhanush, Bharthiraja sir, Prakash Raj sir and I were those four actors.

I was looking at the passion with which he was pitching that to me. We probably spoke for 15-20 minutes and he just told me what the background of it was. He told me Thiruchitrambalam was the story of a family and he explained how it’s going to be and that it’s a very simple story about four people and I said, ‘Yeah, okay, I’ll do the film.’

If I see that kind of passion in someone that they want to make a film for the right reasons, then that’s enough for me. You know then that it’s going to be a good film. It doesn’t matter how much screen time I have, or it doesn’t matter whether I’m important in it. It should be a genuine film. The process of saying yes to Thiruchitrambalam, was literally that.

And what was your first reaction when the National Award was announced for Thiruchitrambalam?

I was… actually, for a second, speechless. Dhanush called me and he said, ‘Congratulations!’ And I said, ‘For what?’ He asked, ‘What are you saying? Are you not aware? You just got the National Award.’ And I said, what? And there was just, complete disbelief, I think. That was my first reaction.

I couldn’t fully understand the feeling. And then I, just walked because I had my writer and my producer with me, we were discussing our script and we were trying to put it together. So, I just walked out and I just broke down. I wasn’t aware that I needed that validation, but it’s always been the difficult road that I always took, the one that is less travelled, the one that is not appreciated.

I always took that road. I didn’t shy away from doing the tougher things. I think that needed that validation that you’re okay. You’re fine. You’re accepted.

Do you feel an honour like a National Award is the culmination of many years of good work and not just that one performance alone?

After the award ceremony in Delhi, I met some of the jury members. They introduced themselves to me later in the evening. And they said that to me as well. Someone who was introducing me to the different jury members said, ‘They all loved your work.’

These people were from Assam and other different places from the country. It was so amazing that they said that we all loved you. ‘We have always loved your work. We’ve always followed the films that you do. Wonderful work that you did.’ They were saying that… ‘There are so many performances that you’ve done that all are so deserving. I felt like it was awarded for the artiste in me. It was of course for Thiruchitrambalam, but it was for everything that I had done until now.

A Bangalore girl, who hails from Kerala, but works proficiently in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi cinema. Did you pick up the linguistic flair from your parents or does that come naturally to you?

It helps being from Bangalore. My parents are also Bangaloreans. They speak four or five languages themselves. Hearing these languages constantly growing up must have helped. I heard my parents speak Tamil more than anything else.

I heard Kannada a lot, because I was my, my parents were not people who stuck to the thought, ‘Oh, we are Malayali. So we have only Malayali.’ It was the opposite. We didn’t have very many Malayali friends. So I heard all these other languages, often. All my dad’s friends were Tamil.

When people ask me, ‘Oh, you speak Tamil? You can understand Tamil?’ It breaks my heart, because that’s the language I know so well. But there’s a strange impression that I’m from Kerala and that’s not the entire truth. I’m from a very multilingual place, Bangalore.

There are people of all languages – Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, that is Bangalore for you. Only people, I think, who live in Bangalore and Bombay will understand how it feels to be in that multicultural place and how that place is home for you. Maybe your ancestors are from somewhere, but that can never be home.

Home is the place where you know where the electricity board is… that’s Bangalore. I don’t need maps, right? That’s home for you. Being in a place like that with that background, and I do have a flair for learning different languages.

I want to now do Bengali films and Marathi films because I want to learn the language. I know if I do two films, I’ll learn the language. Then I can say, Oh, now I know seven languages or eight languages.

Watch the full video interview here:

Nithya Menen talks about the National Award, Thiruchitrambalam, Dhanush and more. Continue reading …Read More