Exclusive! Vineeth Sreenivasan: Pranav Mohanlal and I didn’t even discuss some scenes in Hridayam beforehand

Hridayam, which released earlier this year, is a milestone in both its director Vineeth Sreenivasan as well as its lead actor Pranav Mohanlal’s careers. More so, in the latter’s case as it truly announced that another star was born in Malayalam, especially with his first two movies – Jeethu Joseph’s Aadi and Arun Gopy’s Irupathiyonnaam Noottaandu – never really mining the acting skills of Pranav.

While Hridayam had to endure the delays due to the pandemic before it finally hit theatres during the peak of Omicron threat earlier this year in Kerala, the film went on to set box office records, with it being the first Malayalam movie of 2022 to cross Rs 50 crore, and that too at 50% theatre occupancy in its initial days.

Also read: Exclusive! Vineeth Sreenivasan: Mukundan Unni Associates has me playing a character with no virtues 

A large portion of critics and the audience believe that Pranav’s skills were on full display, solely because it was Vineeth’s directorial. However, the Mukundan Unni Associates actor refuses to take credit.

“Pranav has a very easy demeanour. Be it the way he talks or his body language, there’s a flow about him. I have only tried to capture that flow,” says Vineeth, in an exclusive chat with OTTplay. “I never tried to shape Pranav into the character I had in mind. In fact, it was vice versa. There were so many scenes in the film that we didn’t even discuss beforehand how he had to perform. So, I can’t take credit for any of that. The only thing I did was I didn’t try to change him.”

Hridayam also went on to clinch this year’s Kerala State Film Award for Best Popular movie and its Bollywood remake rights have been snapped up by Karan Johar. Hridayam, which revolved around two phases of its protagonist’s life, also starred Kalyani Priyadarshan, Darshana Rajendran, Ashwath Lal and Aju Varghese in pivotal roles. The movie is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.