‘We are glad that our roles will send a strong message to youngsters’

“Arjun and I are childhood friends and Arjun and Ashwin too are childhood buddies. We are like-minded people and we struck a chord as soon as we met each other on the sets. Even off the camera, we were mostly together. I’m scared of sleeping alone at night and I would knock on Arjun’s door with my mattress and keep chit-chatting through the night,” begins Adhik and he immediately starts looking at Arjun and Ashwin on either side.

Arjun says that the only time they remained quiet was during the shot and when Ajith was around them for the first couple of days. “The sets of Ner Konda Paarvai were split into three zones. Ajith sir’s zone, the girls’ zone and the boys’ zone. Only four boys were a part of our zone, which is a bench in the courtroom for the first couple of days. Looking at us, Ajith sir started spending time with us from the third day,” says Arjun. But things were quite different for Adhik. “These guys mingled easily with him and spoke openly. I couldn’t because I’m a huge fan of Ajith sir and I forgot the director and the actor in me. It took me 10 minutes to come to reality and finish a sentence while conversing with him,” he tells us. Ashwin says that they had no qualms in accepting the role. “We weren’t typical villains like other Tamil film antagonists. Our roles will teach the modern-day youngsters how to treat women with respect. We are glad that we will pass on that message to this generation,” he says with conviction.

Arjun adds that the female leads in the film, Shraddha Srinath, Abirami Venkatachalam and Andrea Tariang too shared a similar chemistry with them. “Just because we were strangers to them, or we play quite contrasting characters in the film didn’t make any difference off the camera. We had good fun,” says Arjun. Adhik had shared screen space with Shraddha earlier in K13. He laughs saying that the actress didn’t recognise him. “I waved at Shraddha and she said a reluctant ‘hi’ to me as she passed by. I was embarrassed. It took some time for her to realise it was me. The girls had a breakdown on the sets playing such impactful role and we realised they would have gone through similar difficulties at some point in time and it personally affected them,” adds Adhik as Ashwin nods. However, the boys quickly snapped out of their introspection, and after posing for pictures, they left on a cheerful note.