Siddharth interview: In ‘Indian 2,’ Kamal Haasan let me compete with him

The actor speaks about working alongside his idol Kamal Haasan in ‘Indian 2,’ what he learnt from filmmaker Shankar, and how his character in the film is close to his real-life personality

When director S Shankar and actor Kamal Haasan’s Indian was released in 1996, actor Siddharth was just a teenager with lots of love for cinema. In just about seven years since then, he was launched in a Shankar film, Boys, and went on to become a prolific actor-producer who has starred in some stellar titles in three languages. What hasn’t changed, according to Siddharth, is the vision he had in cinema, his ever-growing love for Kamal, and the belief he had in Shankar’s world of Indian.

“When I saw Indian for the first time, it made me angry about the common man’s helplessness and made me empathetic to his pain,” says Siddharth, who is now reuniting with Shankar and getting to rub shoulders with Kamal in their much-awaited sequel films, Indian 2 and Indian 3. “Even today, I feel the same anger. That’s why Indian 2 has become more relevant. Nothing has changed on the corruption front, so we need a larger-than-life solution mixed with a lot of logical, real-life solutions.”

Stating how the film is not just about the vigilante justice that Kamal’s character Senapathy metes out, Siddharth says that he sees these sequels as an honest attempt at franchising since it’s also meant to teach and guide future generations on politics, social awareness and social concern.

In this chat ahead of the release of Indian 2, Siddharth speaks about working with his gurus and how his character in the film is closest to his real-life personality.

Excerpts:

Shankar sir and I are at opposite ends of the cinema paradigm; I’m an indie film producer, and he’s a big studio filmmaker. However, what I continue to learn from him is how he rules his film sets. It isn’t easy, but how calmly he controls one of such scale is a lesson. And from both Kamal sir and Shankar, I have learnt that misplaced anger is pointless.

Twenty years ago, my list of favourite actors would have included Kamal Haasan, SV Ranga Rao, Balraj Sahni and Dilip Kumar. These, according to me, are India’s greatest actors. I hadn’t met three of them, but I had seen Kamal sir from afar. I never dreamt then that I would eventually get to meet him, talk to him, or have the chance to show him who I am. Importantly, acting alongside him was beyond my wildest dreams. So just being in Indian 2 is quite something.