With that cracking loud voice of his, actor Janardhanan introduces himself – all too politely to the surprise of an audience unaccustomed to seeing him like that – as Ouseppachan, the miserable father-in-law of a woman found dead in the house. He is one of the suspects in the 1988 crime film Oru CBI Diary Kuruppu. Up until then, Janardhanan had mostly played the unabashed villain in Malayalam films of the 70s and 80s. But for reasons best known to K Madhu, the director of Mammootty’s CBI series, Janardhanan was cast as the harmless rich guy in the film, whose misfortunes somehow translated into comic relief for the audience.
After this, the senior actor played comedian in movie after movie, one of his most loved sequences featuring in Mannar Mathai Speaking, where he cracks the famous line: Ee pathrakkare kondu thottu (tired of these journalists who want to keep writing about me). It was around this time that filmmakers began choosing former “villains” in comic roles, not that any actor should be limited to a particular type of role. There were many talented actors like Thilakan, who had already been juggling all sorts of characters – villainy, comedy, and supporting characters simultaneously. But because they had so far portrayed characters with a certain kind of unlikeable temperament, their curious transition into roles that evoked laughter on the screen was quite welcoming.
Late actor Rajan P Dev was another prominent example of this. An actor who played the bad guy quite a lot in the early 90s – Carlos in Indrajalam, one of his more defining roles – switched over to comedy step by step. At first, he became the funny villain – the one stuck with foolish goons who’d pick him up when ordered to nab the hero. Then he switched completely, playing among other roles, the funny dad to Mammootty (who is the same age as him) and Lal in Thommanum Makkalum.
Song from Thommanum Makkalum
The next generation of villains appeared to follow in these footsteps – late actor Cochin Haneefa leading the way. Haneefa, who had played extremely villainous characters (including in the Tamil crime drama Mahanadhi), showed glimpses of comedy with his terrified goon role in Chenkol. He is today, more remembered for the numerous comic characters he played in the 90s and 2000s, until his untimely passing in 2010.
Cochin Haneefa in Chenkol
It is a testament to these actors’ caliber that their changeovers were not only received well but also actively encouraged by fans of cinema. Baburaj, another actor who moved to comedy from negative characters, is known more for his role as the sensitive cook in Salt and Pepper than for the many stunts and villainy before it.
More recently, Suresh Krishna, whose height alone may have pushed him to villain roles for years, began showing a funny side in movies like Driver’s License and Thrishanku. Perhaps, the comedy works better when unintended humour falls off the face of a serious-looking Suresh Krishna. In Thrishanku, he and Nandhu play middle-aged cousins, who in their attempt to pass off as two cool dudes at a pub, wear matching T-shirts, hold hands, and smile excessively, not knowing how to act young or cool.
Pub song in Thrishanku
For some reason, women actors were not really typecast into playing villains,with a few exceptions in earlier years like Shuba or Kanakadurga, who routinely got cast as the jealous lover or the vengeful woman. Late actors like KPAC Lalitha and Meena used to play the evil stepmother or selfish big sister, but this was among the many different characters they toyed with, and hardly won them a label. Perhaps, thankfully so.
One of Kalpana’s major disappointments was never having won an award until her final years. It was in 2013 that a serious lead role in Thanichalla Njan brought her the National Award for Best Supporting Actor, three years before the actor’s passing.
Kalpana's famous role as UDC Kumari
Awards are another area that skilled actors doing comedy often miss out on. Veteran comedian Jagathy Sreekumar used to comment about his issue with awards, that comedians should also be considered for the best actor category, and that there need not be a separate category for them.
There have been such role reversals in other ways too – where a villain turned into a hero (Babu Antony’s classic example) or a comedian played villain (late Kalabhavan Mani, late Innocent). But most of them came under the very encompassing label of ‘character’ actors, meaning they can play any sort of character with varied emotions as long as it was not the lead.
Rarely have character actors crossed over to the small bracket of artistes who play lead roles and managed to stick around. Jagathy Sreekumar, the indisputable master of comedy, has on occasion led a film – like Avittam Thirunal Arogya Sreeman or Pidakozhi Kookunna Nootandu. But he’d take on the role of comic relief in the next film. Jagadish had a bunch of movies playing the lead in the mid-90s, soon after his successful comic roles, but this phase didn’t last long. He is now, in a late stage of his career, showing new promise as a man who can take on really serious characters, negative or not, and do it really well. Another example is Suraj Venjaramood who seemed immersed head to toe in comedy, but made a name for himself as an actor of skill with his serious characters.
Suraj Venjaramood in Action Hero Biju
In the case of women actors who actively engaged in comedy like Sreelatha, late Kalpana, Manju Pillai and a few others, such a transition had not taken place, and if it did, it did not last long. They would have the occasional lead role, only to be pushed back to the familiar terrain they obviously excelled in. A Sukumari or a KPAC Lalitha would play a funny aunty in one film (remembering Sukumari’s Poochakkoru Mookuthi here), the evil mother-in-law in another (Lalitha’s Malootty), and just as easily portray the nice and warm mother to one of the superstars in a third. But neither they, nor their younger counterparts, were hardly ever cast in lead roles, or given the space to really transition into other shades of characters.
The transition of actors from villains to comedy and character roles only goes to show that tags are temporary and that typecasting is just a sad way of enclosing skilled actors into a bracket of roles they have once done well. They can clearly do much more, if given the chance. Not to forget that Mohanlal, considered one of the biggest actors in the south, began as a villain, trudged onto funny supporting roles while also proving he could lead films singlehandedly.