In many scenes, we didn’t act: Krishna Sankar

While joking around with his classmates in college, Krishna Sankar aka Kichu never thought the same jokes would make them all part of a phenomenon called Premam years later. Kichu, who was known as ‘Manick’ of Neram until recently, has become ‘Koya’ of Premam now, and definitely is being recognized more.
“Sabareesh Varma (who played the third friend Shambhu) and I were friends during our graduation days while Alphonse was a senior.I knew Nivin too before he entered films. What you saw on screen is more or less how we are in real,” he says. So how did he get into Premam? “Alphonse had told me that I had a full length role in his second film; where I am one of the two friends of the lead character. Things happened fast; the discussion and scripting of Premam began in January, the shoot started in July.”
Did they have any idea the film would be such a hit? “Alphonse is someone who thinks different; it was evident in Neram itself. He had a certain kind of confidence in him. We knew it would be a success but never imagined it would be such a hit,” he says. Also, Alphonse gave them the freedom to improvise, he says. “This is the basic track that I want, the rest you can do whatever you want, he would say. He wanted us to be as natural as possible. Since we all knew each other, we had an idea of how the other person would react. The scenes where we were dismissed from the classroom were all what we had gone through in real and so we didn’t act, actually.” Even their reaction when they watched Sai Pallavi’s character dancing for the first time was very much real, as they had no idea she danced so well, he reveals.
As of now, Kichu, who is married with a kid, hasn’t taken up any more films but says talks are on for another film from the same team, although nothing has been finalized yet.