A timid 19-year-old hailing from a conservative Tamil family, Pavithra (Akshara Haasan), hesitantly asks for a pack of condoms to the shopkeeper at the supermarket. To deflect further questions from the man at the counter, she also purchases a bunch of other products, hoping that it would draw the attention away from condoms. But as soon as she points at a pack of condoms, the shopkeeper, who addresses her as ‘Paapa’ (Baby), assumes that she is asking for sanitary napkins.
The scene from Achcham (fear), Madam (innocence), Naanam (coyness), Payirppu (chastity) which started streaming on Amazon Prime Video from Friday, March 25, gives a sneak peek into the world the film is set in where discussions about sex are slided under the carpet and ignored, even by a shopkeeper the character is not related to. It also depicts how Pavithra, played by Akshara Haasan, struggles to forge her path in a set up where she is expected to uphold societal ideals.
What prompted Akshara to pick the script? “It had an interesting premise but I particularly liked how it was handled in a very sensitive manner. It approaches a sensitive topic with innocence and humour. The film discusses sex, intimacy and female desire, but not necessarily from the serious light in which we often see these topics being discussed. There are different ways to approach a film and we hope it reaches audiences the way we had hoped it would,” the Vivekam actor tells TNM.
She also adds, “Playing Pavithra was a new challenge because the character is like the polar opposite of me. In most of the films I have signed, I have at least two to five percent in common with other characters but Pavithra in Achcham Madam Naanam Payirppu is pretty different from who I am as a person.”
Watch the trailer of Achcham Madam Naanam Payirppu here:
Helmed by filmmaker Raja Ramamurthy, the ensemble cast also includes actors Usha Uthup, Malgudi Subha, Anjana Jayaprakash, Shalini Vijayakumar, Janaki Sabesh, Kalairani, Siddhartha Shankar, Suresh Menon, George Maryan, and Kiran Keshav, among others. Though Akshara describes herself as a ‘director’s actor’, she shares that the experience of working with Raja Ramamurthy was fulfilling, for she had the space to share her insights about the story. “Over 90 percent of the team had women on board and the director handled the subject with such sensitivity and care,” says Akshara.
Achcham Madam Naanam Payirppu is Amazon Prime Video’s latest addition to the long-list of women-centric OTT films and series released in the past year. However, this is not Akshara’s first time playing the lead role in an OTT project that revolves around the lives of its female characters in the lead. Akshara essayed the role of Priya in the five-part social media thriller Fingertip which released on streaming platform Zee 5 in 2019. “Achcham Madam Naanam Payirppu was conceptualised as an OTT project. Yes, the previous experience of working in a web series helped since the format for OTT is different,” Akshara says. Nonetheless, she points out that at the end of the day, it is the story that takes the centre stage.
“I hail from a household that not only encouraged us to choose our own paths and where we were expected to let our individuality shine. I had the space to be myself and be 100 percent authentic to who I am,” quips Akshara. This is evident from the 30-year-old actor’s filmography which is quite different from her father, actor Kamal Haasan and sister, actor Sruthi Haasan’s career trajectory. Although she made her debut in 2015 with Shamitabh, the actor has only starred in three films and a series in the subsequent years. “I have been choosing films that allow me to prove my versatility as an actor,” she says, while adding that she is looking forward to the Tamil and Hindi projects that are in the pipeline.