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  Entertainment   Bollywood  06 Feb 2017  Priyadarshan credits Mohanlal for comeback

Priyadarshan credits Mohanlal for comeback

THE ASIAN AGE. | SUBHASH K JHA
Published : Feb 6, 2017, 12:17 am IST
Updated : Feb 6, 2017, 2:10 am IST

It was his friend and maverick actor, Mohanlal, who helped the filmmaker out of his depression.

Priyadarshan and Mohanlal
 Priyadarshan and Mohanlal

The prolific Priyadarshan has been to hell and back. A messy divorce played out in the public domain left him shattered, but he finally put an end to his career break with the hit Oppam, last year.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Priyan says, “It has been a traumatic time for me. I can’t even begin to describe what I went through. I stopped making films for three years, I couldn’t even think straight. I felt I had lost my ability to make films.”

It was his friend and maverick actor, Mohanlal, who helped the filmmaker out of his depression. “He told me I had to get back to work, and not with another comedy. Mohanlal and I have done nearly 40 films together, many of them comedies. I could’ve easily done another comedy with him, but he insisted we do something we haven’t done before.”

Priyan chose to go with a thriller with Mohanlal. “I’ve done so many genres of films in my career; I’ve done 91 films so far. But never a thriller. That’s how Oppam happened.”

When the movie became a box office hit, both Priyan and Mohanlal breathed a sigh of relief. “It was very important for me to come back with a bang, and Mohanlal was worried for me. He never needs to worry about himself. Luckily, the film was a success, and I was back in business. My big moment of vindication was when Kamal Haasan called me and said he couldn’t believe I had made this movie after what I had gone through in my personal life.”

The director can’t get over his leading man’s versatility. “Mohanlal can play anything, and it’s not ‘playing’; it’s becoming the character. In Oppam, he plays a blind man. You have to see how natural he looks. No attempt to look blind. Watching him, we just know he can’t see,” he gushes.

Tags: priyadarshan, mohanlal, kamal haasan