Express News Service
RJ Balaji, who is currently gearing up to release his thriller Run Baby Run, talks about why he chose to take a break from comedy, how he shed his inhibitions as an actor and managed to evolve as a performer
Evolution is an important tool in the arsenal of any artist wanting to stay relevant. And evolution seldom happens in a zone of comfort. It is only by relinquishing their strengths and foraying into the unknown that an actor digs up new ways to entertain the audience. With Run Baby Run, RJ Balaji finds himself at one such crucial point in his career. After making light-hearted films his forte, RJ Balaji lets go of his signature humour to star in a gritty thriller.
“The decision to take up a serious role did not begin with my career trajectory in mind. It is not about me. It is about the audience and what they would like to see,” he says, adding, “The audience has seen me playing the lead three times before, and I have played lighthearted roles in all these films. With my fourth film, I just wanted to offer a new experience to the audience.”
He then adds, “One selfish reason is that since I saw myself getting better at acting, I thought another director might extract the best out of me.” While being happy about the audience accepting him in a lead role, Balaji is conscious of not wanting them to be too familiarised with his choice of scripts. “I wanted to break the audience’s belief that I’ll only do a certain set of things as an actor. I would like the audience to think ‘RJ Balaji films are good’ instead of thinking ‘This is how RJ Balaji’s films usually are.’
Rather than being anxious about this self-enforced metamorphosis, Balaji has palpable excitement because he still approaches cinema from the audience’s perspective. He tells us how the audience might enjoy Run Baby Run not because he has evolved as an actor but because it is a wellmade thriller. As someone who was quite candid about cringing at himself on screen in the early years of his career, Balaji opens up about overcoming the self-aware inadequacies in his acting.
“I think I have become a better performer. I’m not saying I have become the best actor there is, but I think I’m at a place where someone looking at me perform on screen would say ‘RJ Balaji is a decent actor.’ I can hold silent moments on screen now,. I can be more convincing now and I have stopped feeling uncomfortable in front of the camera,” says a proud RJ Balaji.
When asked if he chose Run Baby Run to portray his newly developed acting range, Balaji once again takes up ‘audience perspective’ as a factor to show why it isn’t the case. “Doing a film to portray my acting skills is of no use to the audience. A good film will always have plenty of scope for performance, and that’s exactly what I found in Run Baby Run. It gave me a lot of space to portray my acting abilities but not at the expense of the audience engagement.”
Delving deeper into the inception of Run Baby Run, and working with writer filmmaker Jiyen Krishnakumar for the first time, Balaji says that things actually fell into place at the right moment. This script came to him at a time when he was looking to do something different. “Right from the narration, I liked the story, and the director gave me the confidence that he could translate the narration on the big screen. Looking at the output, I am glad he delivered what he promised.”
Balaji attributes the technical strength of Run Baby Run to his director and further points out how Jiyen’s 2017 Malayalam film Tiyaan was a technically proficient project. When asked to elaborate on how his upcoming thriller will be different from the assembly line of thrillers being doled out in Tamil cinema, Balaji says, “Most of the thrillers rely on a minimal environment and often takes place entirely during the night. However, Run Baby Run is nothing like that. It demanded an expansive setting and real locations. It demanded technical proficiency and Jiyen is good at it.”
After helming back-to back films — Mookuthi Amman and Veetla Vishesham — RJ Balaji is clear that he might not return to direction anytime soon. “I wanted to act with other directors in a couple of films to see what I can learn from them, and use those inputs in my own direction. So, this year, I won’t be directing. I will be completely focusing on my acting,” signs off Balaji.
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