K asaba , a cop drama, with undertones of action, not only introduces us to the young Nithin Renji Panicker but we also meet, after a while, Maqbool Salman and Shaheen Siddique. While Shaheen, actor Siddique’s son, has acted with Mammootty before in Pathemari , this is Maqbool’s first time and is special for a reason – he is acting with his muthaappa .
The young actor is Mammootty’s nephew, his younger brother Ibrahim Kutty’s son.
Maqbool essays the role of Jagan, a college union leader in the film, in which Mammootty appears in a cop role, after a while. “The role demands a certain degree of maturity and hopefully I have managed to do justice to it,” he says. He has acted in a handful of films, the notable among them being the 2012 film Matinee .
He and Shaheen are all praise for debutant director Nithin. Shaheen says: “On the sets I heard that he is a brilliant writer, confident and calm. I have never heard him raise his voice.”
Blank – is what Maqbool went when Mammootty walked into the sets. “The first two days I was cool and all was going well. And then the next day, it was a crucial scene, and muthaappa walked in. I went blank. I got anxious; usually Nithin would be at the monitor, now there was muthaappa also. I didn’t want to get anything wrong when he was there. That scene had a scope for performance. Eventually, his inputs helped me a great deal.”
Kinship also means, in certain cases, subconscious influences – of performance styles and mannerisms. That was the advice Mammootty gave his nephew, “He told me, ‘you are doing fine, but just keep me out and you’ll do fine,’” says Maqbool with a laugh. He has been careful, he says.
Similarly one of Shaheen’s takeaways from the film too is Mammootty’s advice. Encouraging for a young actor and something wannabe actors would do well to pay heed to. He essays a pivotal character, Arjun – his father’s son in the film.
“Mammukka asked me how I felt about a particular scene and I told him I wasn’t too happy and that I felt didn’t have a screen presence. He then told me that I couldn’t expect his or my father’s screen presence in my second film itself. He told me films were changing, it was better not to have an onscreen image, that it was better to be simple and normal.” Simply put – to avoid the trap of an image.
