Tamil stars as villains draw a blank

The lukewarm response for the ‘baddy act’ by some Tamil stars in recent Telugu films has raised doubts about the popularity of the Tamil stars  to pull-in crowds playing negative roles. In this connection, the hero-turned-villains, especially, are finding it difficult to sign more Telugu films. Despite the much-hype created around the Tamil star Madhavan turning a villain for the first time in ‘Savyasachi,’it didn’t really set the box office on fire. “Madhavan couldn’t break his lover boy image and couldn’t send shivers down the spine of the audience in action films. Though he did a good job, he may not be roped in for negative roles at least for some more time,” says producer Anil Sunkara, who introduced popular Tamil and Telugu actor Arjun as an antagonist in ‘Lie.’ 

“At that point of time, we felt that Arjun playing the role of a dreaded fugitive, who is also a master of disguise in the spy thriller would be a novel factor. Of course, it created lot of hype, but the hero-turned-villain couldn’t fetch us a box office winner,” he adds. Even though another Tamil star Prasanna  couldn’t make an impact with ‘Jawan’, his colleagues like Arvind Swamy and Aadi Pinishetty tasted big success with blockbusters like ‘Dhruva’ and ‘Sarrainodu’ respectively. However, the latter changed tracks and began to don decent roles in films like ‘Ninnu Kori’ and ‘Rangasthalam’. “Aadhi is doing the right thing and picking up varied roles rather than waiting for negative roles. Whereas, Arvind Swamy’s career as a baddy didn’t go beyond one film in T-town because the handsome actor in a baddy role is a bit difficult to digest, barring his tailor-made role in ‘Dhruva’ ”, says famed writer Gopi Mohan.

Another director Ravi Babu adds “It has become difficult to find young villains to take on new-age superstars like Prabhas, Jr NTR , Ram Charan Tej and Allu Arjun, so, directors are looking towards Tamil films and rightly picking actors who have some standing in K-town. It will go on since Arjun Vijay is essaying the role of a baddy in ‘Sahoo’ even though his earlier film ‘Bruce Lee’ bombed,”. Interestingly, seasoned actor Sarath Kumar’s baddy act failed to click in ‘Naa Peru Surya’ because he played positive roles in films like ‘Jaya Janaki Nayaka’ and ‘Bunny’.  Summing up the ‘mixed’ luck for Tamil heroes-turned-villains, director Meher Ramesh says, “Surely, B-town actors will have an edge over Tamil actors for playing antagonist roles. This is because the latter have an established image, while the former came with a clean slate, that’s the big difference.” he concludes.