Jeethu Joseph says actors prefer larger-than-life roles: Many are confused after success of 'Lokah'

NEW DELHI: Filmmaker Jeethu Joseph says many actors today, whether in Bollywood or the South, are worried about their public image and want roles that present them as larger-than-life heroes, a challenge that he faced with his most recent directorial "Mirage".

The filmmaker, known for "Drishyam" franchise and the film "Memories", said actors are worried that if they take on complex, grey, or negative roles, audiences might reject them.

"Not just in Bollywood, many actors here (Malayalam cinema) are stuck in their images. That's the main problem because they're scared that if they do a negative character, the audience will hate them.

"As a director, I always want to do different types of films. So I believe that an actor should do all kinds of characters," Joseph told PTI in an interview.

The filmmaker believes that actors are rushing to do larger-than-life stories, riding on the current wave of pan-Indian blockbusters from Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam cinema.

"After the success of 'Lokah', many actors are confused," Joseph said, referring to the Kalyani Priyadarshan-led superhero title which emerged as a surprise blockbuster earlier this year.

The director said he recently met an actor who cancelled four-five films as he felt those movies will not work now.

"I asked him, 'What kind of films were they?' He told me that they were all those realistic films and one of them was a comedy film. But in all those films, there are no larger-than-life kind of characters.

"So now he's looking for some larger-than-life character where he is looking for a pan-Indian release. Because recently, even Kannada, Telugu (and in) Malayalam, pan-Indian films are making big bucks at the box office. So every actor wants to do the same," Joseph added.

He said he doesn't blame actors for chasing such projects because their income depends on box-office performance.

"But the problem is if you keep on doing this type of film, after a point, the audience will definitely be fed up," he added.

Joseph wanted to make "Mirage", a crime thriller, as a Hindi film and pitched the project to several actors but they all declined.

"The character was going to be a pure villain. So, many of the female actors were ready to do that film, but unfortunately, no hero was ready to do the film. After a while, I told the producer that let's drop this film because we've been running after this project for five years. And he really got upset.

"And I really liked it because the attraction of that subject was a hero turning to be a pure villain. Usually, whenever a hero is doing a negative character, there will be some justification or some sugar coating for this thing. This is nothing like that. This is a pure negative character."

"Mirage" was released in theatres in September and it is now streaming on SonyLIV.

The story revolves around a woman named Abhirami (Aparna Balamurali), whose fiance mysteriously disappears after a train accident.

Unable to accept his fate as a simple accident, Abhirami teams up with Aswin (played by Asif Ali), an investigative journalist. Together, they dig deeper — uncovering financial scams, hidden identities, and a web of secrets pointing to something far darker than a simple tragedy, as per the official logline.

"I thought about Asif because he's a kind of actor who never bothered about his image or his kind of characters or his screen space. I narrated this storyline, then he said, 'Sir, I liked it, I want to do it.' That's why we brought this thing, this project into Malayalam," he said.