Thankam star Vineeth Sreenivasan: Didn’t have any hesitation when I took up Mukundan Unni Associates | Exclusive

Vineeth Sreenivasan seems to have taken his acting skills a notch higher with his latest two films – Abhinav Sunder Nayak’s Mukundan Unni Associates, which is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, and Saheed Arafath’s Thankam, which released in theatres on January 26. Both the films have him essaying characters that are not usually what the audiences associate with him.

The feedback for Mukundan Unni Associates, in which he plays a manipulative lawyer, has been extremely varied. Ask him if he was wary of taking up the role when it was first offered to him and Vineeth, in an exclusive chat with OTTplay, tells us, “When I decided to do Mukundan Unni Associates, I didn’t have any hesitation. When you read the script, you get an idea of the kind of feedback from the audience and I was prepared for it when I did the movie. Mukundan Unni is a not grey character, he’s purely black; he is narcissistic, criminal and a sociopath.”

Also read: Vineeth Sreenivasan: For Thankam, We didn’t have to prepare a lot as Syam, Arafath would keep briefing us | Exclusive 

The actor also stresses that playing the character was a huge learning experience for him. “I had to be extremely careful about my mannerisms and body language while portraying him. Abhinav would also observe all of that and whenever I slipped from the character, he would correct me. That was a different exercise for me,” he says.

How different was it from acting in the crime-drama Thankam, in which he plays a goldsmith? “I was extremely relaxed while doing Thankam. I still don’t know what I did. It was like they were capturing the scenes while we were casually talking; it was that easy to work in the film,” says Vineeth, adding it was the first film that he had shot using sync sound.

Thankam, which also has Biju Menon, Aparna Balamurali and Girish Kulkarni, is scripted by Maheshinte Prathikaram, Joji and Kumbalangi Nights writer Syam Pushkaran.