Desi superhero Tovino Thomas reveals the toughest part of Minnal Murali: ‘It would have been a failure if…’

While Tovino seems to have no qualms about Guru Somasundaram’s supervillain stealing the thunder from Minnal Murali, he also underlined that playing a superhero came with its own challenges.

The actor, who accepted that he first wanted to play Shibhu, said during a conversation with The Indian Express, “I love playing Jaison. Because it is not an easy character to play. His transformation from a selfish, dim-witted youngster to a superhero is gradual. We also had to do a gradual body transformation for that as well. In the beginning, he is chubby but in the climax, he’s lean and fit. It was a journey for me also. Even though I was tempted by the character played by Guru Somsaundram, I am very happy that I got to play Jaison.”

Tovino Thomas in Minnal Murali. (Photo: Basil Joseph/Instagram)

While Shibhu brings the element of drama to the narration, Jaison’s naivety and his frivolous self-centeredness are the main sources of comedy in the movie. And as they say, comedy is a serious business.

“People think that doing humour on screen is easy. But, it’s not. If I perform an emotional scene and the audience doesn’t cry, it’s still okay. But, if I perform a comedy and the audience doesn’t laugh, that’s a failure. We should set the meter right. If we underplay, the audience may not get it. If we overplay, it will be called overacting. We shot the film for 111 days spanning over two years. And that meant I had to maintain my consistency in performance (and physique),” he said.

Between the breaks of Minnal Murali, Tovino recovered from an injury caused by filming a stunt sequence for Kala, which was released last year.

During the shooting of Kala, he sustained an internal injury due to which he was in ICU for two days and had to be hospitalised for a week. “I was scared as 70 per cent of Minnal Murali was already shot. The fight sequences of the climax were not shot. When I got injured, I was worried even though I didn’t tell Basil (at the time). I didn’t know if I could do fight sequences anytime soon. But, I didn’t want to stress out Basil by saying that. I was on bed rest for a month. And then I did Kaanekkaane, which had no action sequences, so it didn’t require a lot of physical effort. After a 2 months gap, I resumed training and worked on my core strength to avoid injuries (in the future),” he added.

Tovino also is afraid of falling into an image trap that comes with stardom. And that fear sort of keeps him on his toes in terms of experimentation. While in Kala he played a privileged narcissist with daddy issues who cares about no one but himself, in Kaanekkaane, he played a man burdened by enormous guilt stemming from the untimely death of his wife.

“I purposefully try to do different kinds of movies and different kinds of characters, so that I won’t be typecasted. The one thing I am scared of is being forced to do a similar role over and over again. My next movie Naaradan (helmed by Aashiq Abu) is completely opposite to what I have done in Minnal Murali,” he added.