There is a scene in Premam where three young men watch their teacher ‘Malar’ perform a little dance sequence, after she tells them she will teach them dance for a college show. What George (played by Nivin Pauly) and his friends didn’t expect is to see Malar jump and break into a fast sequence of ‘steps’. Stunned, the boys ask, “Can the steps be made easier?” That was not just their lines for the film, that’s what they really asked the director after watching Sai Pallavi dance. Krishnasankar alias Kichu remembers it all too well. “We were standing there shocked.”
He plays Koya, George’s close friend from school and Shambhu is the other close friend played by Shabareesh Varma. They are friends in real life too. Kichu and Shabareesh were together in college and Alphonse Putharen the director was their senior. Nivin, he met later for a short film, before the Malarvadi days.
“After college, Alphonse went on to learn editing, Shabari went to learn sound engineering, and I worked as an assistant cinematographer with Manoj Pillai. But, Alphonse knew I really wanted to act so when he took Neram, he called me to be Manick, the rich boy going after girls.” A year later, Kichu acted in Law Point and now in Premam. If in Neram, he appeared in five scenes, in Premam, he never leaves the hero’s side, standing with him through thick and thin and all that’s bad.
“It was also not easy playing the different stages of life in Premam. We started with the college sequence where we could look like we really did. Next, was the stage as 30-year-olds and Alphonse asked us to put on a few kilograms and maybe develop a paunch. That was alright too, but after that we were to play teenagers going to Plus 2. We had to lose weight, go on a diet, jog and all the rest. But it was fun, we were all doing it together.”
