EXCLUSIVE | Roshan Mathew on working with Janhvi Kapoor in 'Ulajh': 'This is a film where I felt like...'

The trailer of Janhvi Kapoor, Gulshan Devaiah, Roshan Mathew’s Ulajh indicates it would be a political thriller.

_Ulajh_  follows the journey of a young diplomat, who, belonging to a prominent family of patriots, finds herself embroiled in a dangerous personal conspiracy while far from her home turf, at a career-defining post. Having garnered a lot of attention, the teaser of Ulajh was unveiled by Janhvi.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, Mathew spoke about his prep for the film and how different it will be from his last outing Paradise.

Edited excerpts from the interview

How did you prepare for this role?

There were a lot of discussions with Sudanshu personally. Then we did a workshop with mister Atul Mongia. That was Janhvi and me. I had one session with Chang. The director was present. So Ulajh was one of the few films where I felt like there was a lot of time given for prep and I was very happy with that.

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After Paradise, what do you feel fans and critics can expect from your character, your performance?

This is a completely different kind of film and a character. So I feel like that will be obvious at, like, first glance. So even if you watch the trailers of these 2 films back to back, I think that’s very obvious. But from a lot of time, like, I generally believe it’s a film with a fresh energy that it’s going to be entertaining and engaging for, like, all audiences or something that for everybody to relate to. So I just hope that that works out.

What is your thought process like apart from the character that has been written for you? Do you see anything else in the script? I mean, are there questions that you would like to ask your director?

I first, evaluate whether the script is exciting for me. As in if I watch it as a film, would I like the film? You know, that’s primary. Then I guess it’s about finding what is common between this character and me. Where do we meet each other? Me the person and this character. Then you sort of identify what you have in common. That really helps as an initial book. The rest of it, you sort of build around it. In this case, Sudhanshu was very great to work with, actually. He was very invested in figuring out, like, an entire backstory for these characters, you know, where they come from, what their upbringing has been like. So he’s very invested in having all of these conversations.

Not all directors are. You know, it’s sometimes that’s sort of put aside as an actor’s homework. You wanna do it? You do it. Otherwise, it’s fine. You just come and get the scene done. So, here, there’s a lot of collaborative work with Sudhanshu on that. And he also had some, like, very clear ideas about this character because he also needs these characters to serve the purpose that they serve in the script. He needs them to act in the way that, you know, make the decisions that they make in this screenplay and all of that. So he had this, idea. So he sort of like put all of that together and make a rough muddy shape easy figure in your head. And then you go out and try it out and it gets clearer and clearer.