Sanchita
The 2nd season of The Family Man continues to be all the rage and we’re still giggling over the ‘Chellam Sir’ and ‘Don’t be a Minimum Guy’ memes!
It was recently reported that Manoj Bajpayee (played Srikant Tiwari) was paid 2.5 crores this season while Samantha Akkineni (Raji) was given Rs 1.5 crores!
Another prominent character was introduced in this new season – the Chennai-based intelligence officer Muthu Pandian. He was played by Ravindra Vijay.
In conversation with Rediff, he revealed that he was a DOCTOR by profession previously! He had practised medicine briefly before pursuing acting in 2011.
Ravindra said – “I heard about the show through my friend Suman Kumar, who is the writer of The Family Man. I auditioned for the show. When season 2 casting began, season 1 hadn’t released yet, so we didn’t know how big it was going to be.”
Having grown up in Bangalore, Ravindra Vijay is fluent in Kannada and Telugu and even his Hindi is better than the character he’s portraying.
“I had to make it seem like I was not a natural Hindi-speaking guy. My Hindi is way better than Muthu’s. I had to unlearn some of my Hindi,” he commented.
He was all praises for his co-star Manoj Bajpayee – “Working with Manoj was a learning experience; he makes it seem effortless. He creates a kind of space where everyone can contribute.”
Talking about his transition from doctor to actor, Ravindra said that acting started merely as a hobby in medical college.
“After college, I practiced (medicine) for some time. Later, I started working for a theatre group called Rafiki in Bangalore for a few years. I moved to Chennai and continued doing theatre.
Then a Tamil movie, Anbirkiniyal, happened. A couple of years later, I did the Telugu movie Uma Maheshwara Ugra Roopasya, which gave me a big break. Then The Family Man happened.
I will continue working in Tamil and Telugu films. I hope to get work in Hindi too.”
Ravindra Vijay concluded by saying that he doesn’t want to get typecast and he hopes to explore comedy roles in future.
Talking about Season 3 of the series – looks like ‘Covid-19’ could probably be a major element in the plot going by the season 2 ending.
