Exclusive: Parvathy Thiruvothu on Dubbing for Kareena Kapoor Khan in Daayra and 20 Years in Cinema

Parvathy Thiruvothu’s first experience of dubbing for another actor came with Daayra. In Meghna Gulzar’s crime drama starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran, Parvathy lends her voice to Kareena’s Ajooni in the Malayalam version. She approached it less as an exercise in imitation and more as an attempt to understand the performance already in front of her.

Speaking to us, she says, “I made sure that I wouldn’t watch any other performance of Kareena’s. Even though she has such a wonderful and distinct voice and timbre, what she has done in Daayra is unlike anything else. Some of the quieter moments, where her voice cracks, her pauses and the way she plays with inflection to throw people off what she might actually be going through are all very specific to Ajooni.”

“I needed to understand how it worked for Meghna and then bring that through Kareena’s voice and make it my own. It was a very interesting rollercoaster of an experience. I am curious to know what was going through Kareena’s mind when she was dealing with some of those scenes. If I get to meet her at some point, I would love to understand that,” continues Parvathy.

The actress had to make the Malayalam dialogue fit Kareena’s existing mouth movements without compromising the meaning or emotional rhythm of the scene. She worked closely with Shankar Ramakrishnan to shape the lines accordingly. She was also fascinated by the way the film communicates without explaining everything to its audience.

“Some of the older films that I have watched and looked up to have a screenplay structure that doesn’t rely on a certain kind of structural spoon-feeding of the audience. They trust the audience to understand what is happening and why it is happening. What surprised me the most was how much the script and direction trust the audience to go with the flow of it.”

Rather than asking her to imitate Kareena, Meghna was happy with what Parvathy was naturally bringing to the character. “When I met Meghna, I asked if there was anything she would like me to play around with in my voice. I was speaking to her the way I speak, and she said, ‘I want nothing else but this.’ That was a good feeling, knowing that my voice matched what she needed for Ajooni. Hearing Kareena on screen with my voice was one of the most surreal feelings I have ever had in my entire career as an actor.”

She also developed a small ritual to separate the voice from the face and judge her work on its own terms. “During retakes, I sometimes had to close my eyes to judge my own voice performance and then watch it along with the visuals at the end. If I kept looking at her, I would feel that I may not have done justice to it. After every scene, I would first close my eyes, listen to my take and make sure that my diction and delivery were good to me. Then I would watch it along with Kareena’s face, and that is how I judged how to move forward from one scene to another.”

The experience becomes even more interesting when placed alongside the kind of work Parvathy is doing in Malayalam cinema right now. In Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar, directed by Shahad Nilambur, she plays a constable, while Dhootha 2 saw her play an inspector. Though both roles belong to the police world, Parvathy’s approach to each character goes beyond the uniform or rank.

“Once I get the screenplay, I read it multiple times and then completely forget about it. Before I go to the set, I may need to know the scene number and what’s going on because most of the time it is shot non-chronologically. If you’re shooting the 50th scene on the first day, I need to build up everything that has already happened to the character in my mind up to that point. These days, I try to forget the making and screenplay flow a little more than usual. Then I can build up the inner world of the character. That leads me to a moment of authenticity because I’m not trying to remember lines, I’m not trying to remember the flow, and I’m not trying to remember continuity. I’m trying to remember who the character is in this moment, in the most transparent way possible.”

Once that work is done, she tries to forget the mechanics of making the film and focus only on building the character.

“Sometimes, what makes me curious is the mix of the character, screenplay and the director. Like it was in Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar. There are also times I would probably be a little less enthusiastic about the character because I know it’s something that is not shocking or scary. But I would still do it because I would want to work with the team. So these days, the excitement of working with the team is a lot more for me in a project than my character. It doesn’t have to be the central character.”

Also Read: Parvathy Thiruvothu Didn’t Try To Sound Like Kareena Kapoor Khan In Daayra

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