Actor Akshay Kumar opened up about the creative differences that he had with his Sarfira director Sudha Kongara, and said that it took them a week or so to sort things out. Sudha also directed Soorarai Pottru, the original Tamil film upon which Sarfira is based. In an interview, Akshay said that he found her way of working to be irregular from what he is accustomed to, but noted that she was gracious enough to accept his requests, like when he asked her to shoot an emotional scene with multiple cameras, and film longer takes.
In an interview with Galatta Plus, Akshay was asked if he thinks directors are also responsible for shaping a performance. He said, “Very much. He’s the captain of the ship. I could be doing another film also, but he’s going to be with that film throughout. So, yes, the director makes a lot of difference. The producer makes a lot of difference; the technicians make a lot of difference.”
Also read – Soorarai Pottru: The syntax of Tamil cinema isn’t something that Bollywood should be trying to emulate
Asked about the first day of shoot on Sarfira, Akshay said, “The first day of shoot… It always takes time for the actor to blend with the director. I have to learn their way of working. It took a little time on Sarfira, maybe five or six days. And then, after that, it was very smooth sailing.” Akshay was asked if he could elaborate with some examples, and Akshay said, “Sudha is a director who sets up her camera, and tells the actor what they need to do. But there are many directors who ask, ‘You tell me what you’re going to do, and I’ll move the camera accordingly. Sudha was telling me what I have to do, not the other way around.”
Akshay cited the examples of other filmmakers that he has worked with, and briefly explained their processes. He said that Priyadarshan lets actors do their thing, but knows exactly when to rein them in. Shankar is ‘very particular’, he said, and doesn’t allow actors to deviate even minorly from what he has envisioned. Rajkumar Santoshi allows his actors to exercise complete freedom, while Neeraj Pandey trims his own dialogue and expects actors to fill in the gaps that lines normally would.
In an earlier interview with Galatta Plus, Sudha also opened up about the conflicting points-of-view that they had on set initially, and said that she was far more comfortable working with Suriya on Soorarai Pottru, because she’d known him for decades. “With Akshay sir, it’s ‘sir’ first of all, and I was meeting this gentleman for the first time… The first six days, he wasn’t happy. He was like, ‘What is this girl making me do all this rubbish?’ So then he and the producer spoke to me, and I said, ‘You do whatever you like to do, and I will tell you when it isn’t going right.’” She said that after she showed Akshay a cut of a scene, he was convinced that her process was working. Like Soorarai Pottru, Sarfira is based on the life of Capt Gopinath, the man who created India’s first low-cost airline.
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