A Hard Act To Follow

Malayalam cinema star Dulquer Salmaan makes his Bollywood debut. Can he live up to expectations?

- Suhani Singh

Dulquer Salmaan is wearing a plain white T-shirt with a stain in the middle, but the female reporter before us only has eyes on the Malayali heart-throb’s face. She tells him how he has a legion of female admirers in her office since his 2015 Mani Ratnam-directed Tamil film OK Kanmani. The 31-year-old actor, son of Malayalam superstar Mammootty, blushes, but downplays his appeal. In Mumbai for 10 days to promote his Hindi film debut, Karwaan, he is learning the ropes of promotions in Bollywood.

In Kerala, says Salmaan, he barely does any. But with Karwaan’s lead, Irrfan, away in London for cancer treatment, he is left to do multiple interviews and talk about the road trip comedy in which, he has no qualms admitting, he plays “second fiddle” to Irrfan. “Besides those who have seen OK Kanmani, I don’t know how many people in the markets up north know who I am,” he says. “Having Irrfan in the film is helping me being seen. (Later) I have enough coming my way that’s about me.”

Salmaan is gradually making a case for himself as the first multi-lingual star since Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth and the late Sridevi forayed into Hindi cinema from the South. Since his debut with the Malayalam film Second Show (2012), he has done several Tamil and Telugu movies, with this year’s Mahanati, in which he plays legendary actor Gemini Ganesan, being his biggest hit to date. So what took him so long to enter Bollywood? “It’s not something I have actively pursued,” says Salmaan. “I am pretty bad at creating projects. I literally handle my own work.” While he wanted to “push original content”, what until now came his way were remakes of his popular Malayalam films, Ustad Hotel (2012) and Bangalore Days (2014).