Dulquer Salmaan on Karwaan, working with Irrfan, Mithila Palkar and breaking into Bollywood

The Malayalam movie sensation Dulquer Salmaan, who was widely noticed with Mani Ratnam’s 2015 critically acclaimed super hit OK Kanmani, is getting used to the frantic film promotions in Mumbai’s Hindi film industry and he seems to be enjoying it thoroughly. The travel adventure  Karwaan  marks Dulquer’s Bollywood debut and considering that he will follow it up with The Zoya Factor opposite Sonam Kapoor mid next year, it’s certainly a good prep for the actor with an allure and dapper appearance. “The promotion activity here is very hectic as compared to down South but I am enjoying it. Usually I am shooting my other films when a film of mine is up for release in South, but this is for the first time that I am doing only promotions. I am excited and very happy the way the film has turned out. I am in a good space,“ says Dulquer, who is fondly referred to as ‘DQ’.  Dulquer made his acting debut in the 2012 Malayalam action film Second Show, for which he received the Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut.

Karwaan takes two friends from Bengaluru to Kochi, when Dulquer’s character receives the wrong dead body after his father dies. En route, they pick up a bratty teenager, played by newcomer and internet sensation Mithila Palkar , and embark on what the makers call “a journey of a lifetime.” Besides working with Irrfan, what attracted Dulquer to Karwaan was the weird mix of three characters from totally different walks of life coming together. “When I heard the script I was like, ‘Wow, three super interesting characters with no connection to each other’. This was a very unique story I had heard. Our different backgrounds also helped us connect during the shoot,” he says.

He continues, “Irrfan and Mithila would want to know about my cinema, and Irrfan and I would want to know about Mithila’s internet career. She came on the scene in a very unconventional way which is not familiar to me or Irrfan. And Mithila and I wanted to know about Irrfan’s long and acclaimed journey in cinema. These three backgrounds of ours made us three different people. That is quite evident in the movie,” says Dulquer, who was in awe of Irrfan initially. “But it was good fear; we have lot of respect for Irrfan. We didn’t have to break the ice with him; he did it for both of us because somebody of his stature knows and can sense it that the younger actors do get a bit intimidated around him,” he adds.

( Also read — Mithila Palkar on Karwaan: Working with Irrfan and Dulquer was daunting, but they eased me into it )

But what is quite surprising is that Dulquer — the son of illustrious Kerala superstar Mammootty — who’s currently enjoying a very successful run in his career, had to actually convince his parents that he wanted to become an actor. “That’s because there are no guarantees in film business. Also, in Malayalam film industry, at least when I was starting out, there were no second generation actors who had made it. When we were growing up, though we loved movies and had deep down desires to act, I don’t think any of us saw it as a career opportunity. Most Malayalam actors those days raised their kids to educate them and nudged them in other directions but not cinema. So just like Mithila, from a complete non-filmy background, had to convince her parents that she wanted to become an actor; even I had to convince my parents that I wanted to act,” says Dulquer.

In fact, Dulquer says, their family deliberately shifted from Kerala to Tamil Nadu so that they were not influenced by films and therefore he wasn’t too aware of his father’s star status while growing up. “We grew up in Chennai and that was a deliberate move by my parents to keep us away from films because my father was a bigger star in Malayalam. But two to three years later, he was equally known in Chennai as well, post release of Thalapathi (1991 Tamil crime-drama written and directed by Mani Ratnam, also starring Rajinikanth). But in Chennai, there was not too much attention unlike Kerala. I had a normal upbringing. Also, I didn’t invest too much time thinking about that. I never got any special treatment in school nor my parents treated us differently,” says Dulquer.

Is that the reason why Dulquer has sound educational background? He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Purdue University in the US and worked as a business manager before pursuing his acting career. “(Laughs) Possibly. I studied and worked for almost two to three years and for that long, I didn’t see acting career as an option. My educational trajectory was as far away from the movies as possible. Now I do sometimes think that I should have done films. More than what you study in college, it is also about the people you meet, the exchanges you have with other people who have the same interest,” he says.

He continues, “Therefore I could relate to my character Avinash in Karwaan. He is someone who is not very happy with the way his life has turned out. He has different hopes and dreams but he is leading clockwork kind of a life and therefore he is mentally aging faster than he should. I have been there. I didn’t like what I was doing before I became an actor and wanted to do something creative. Hence Avinash and Tanya (Mithila’s character), who is practical and unapologetic, have great dynamics on screen.”

( Also read - Will Karwaan help Bollywood realise the untapped potential of road-trip films as a compelling storytelling device? )

Dulquer, who is known to be one of the most versatile actors, tasted stardom quite early in his career as the audience took to him right from his initial films. His ensemble romantic drama Bangalore Days (2014) ranks among the highest-grossing Malayalam films. He also garnered acclaim for portraying the title role in the 2015 romantic drama Charlie, winning him the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor. “It is lot to do with the films that came my way; I was in the right place at the right time. If I had tried my hands much earlier, the cinema that was made then, I couldn’t relate to. I was fairly lucky that I was there exactly at the cusp of the transition,” says Dulquer.

“But most importantly,” he continues, “What has worked in my favour is that I don’t really look like my father. So I have been able to have my own identity. Also, our personalities are little different.”  Then, it’s quite evident that the father-son don’t have much interactions on their movie careers. “We don’t discuss work and movies because he wants me to make my own choices and learn on my own. This was right from the beginning. Nobody guided me. But I was told that if I fail, I will still have home, shelter and food (laughs). Also, my father is busier than me. He does six to seven movies in a year whereas I do three to five,” he says.

With Dulquer making a crossover to Hindi films, it’s important to take notice of the fact that while Bollywood has often welcomed south Indian actresses with an open arm, it’s rarely accommodated its male stars. Almost all top south Indian superstars and legends such as Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, Mohanlal, Nagarjuna had met with some degree of success but could never establish themselves in Bollywood. Even many of the new generation actors like Suriya, Siddharth or Sudeep failed to make an impact. Is this the right time for Salmaan to enter Bollywood?

( Also read — Before Karwaan’s Dulquer Salmaan, a look at how South actors have fared in Bollywood, from Kamal Haasan to Dhanush )

“Look, you can’t take away (anything) from those actors. A lot of the time we have to choose from what comes our way. You will always be offered more work from your primary industry and then, you may connect to the industry from another region. Lot of times, people say that South Indian actors have tried in Bollywood and failed. I don’t think you can call it failure. You definitely gain from the experience,” Dulquer reasons. “But what is interesting now is there are common themes; most stories are relatable; they are very human stories that connect in helping us work in multiple languages. This is the fourth language film I am doing. And I don’t know if the longevity in a particular industry defines your success or failure,” he further adds.

And as we wind up, we can’t help but ask Dulquer about the secret of Mammootty’s youth. The 66-year-old senior superstar has been ruling the Malayalam film industry for over five decades. “I wish he would tell me because then I’d follow it as well. But I hope it is there in my genes, too,” he signs off laughing heartily.