For two months, Niranj went to the University Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram every morning. He learnt to run like a sprinter. Padmini Thomas, state sports council president, was there to guide him. So were a coach and other sportspersons. You’d have seen some of them with Niranj in the recently released Malayalam movie Finals.
“Manu, a sprinter whom I chase in the film, is also there,” says Niranj, happy that Finals has been doing well in the theatres. The film is his sixth as an actor, but PR Arun, the director, chose him as a relatively fresh face.
“You might say I forced my way into the film,” says Niranj with surprising candour in a young actor. His father, the famous actor and producer Maniyanpilla Raju, had listened to Arun’s story years ago. Arun was then a writer, and not keen to direct his own script. When he changed his mind later, he asked Niranj to do the role of Manuel, a supporter of Rajisha Vijayan’s cyclist character Alice, who is also very much in love with her. You don’t realise then that he is going to have something more to do in the second half of the film – the part that made him train at the University Stadium.
“That’s what my dad liked about the film. He doesn’t want me to be a star or anything, but be a part in such films which are more about the people involved,” says Niranj. Maniyanpilla became the producer of the film and also did a small role as a minister.
Not that Maniyanpilla always paved the way for his son’s smooth sailing. Black Butterfly, the first film Niranj acted in as an undergraduate, was his dad’s production. And after that, it's only been Finals. At a time when Niranj wanted to learn filmmaking at the university, he showed his dad the brochure of a foreign school. “He looked at the fees and said, you don’t need to study. Did Mohanlal and Mammootty go to study in such schools? Acting is a natural gift that you learn more about on the way, he said.”
Niranj’s plan was to assist filmmakers before he tried his luck in acting. “I didn’t want to jump into acting,” he says. But soon after he finished school, the offer to act as the antagonist in Black Butterfly, a remake of the Tamil film Vazhakku Enn 18/9, came.
Studies took after that. Graduation and post-graduation happened in Commerce and Marketing Management respectively before Niranj was signed for another film. “That was Bobby where I played a young man in love with an older woman, though Miya – who played the older woman – and I are nearly the same age. I lost eight kgs and my moustache to look the part,” he says.
Other movies and roles came his way – as the concerned young son among mostly selfish siblings in the Mohanlal starrer Drama, as a nice young man in Sakalakalashala and another nice young man in Soothrakkaran. “It’s all been nice young men after that first villain role,” Niranj says, almost as if he misses being the bad guy.
It’s not important to him – the goodness or badness of the role, or the length of his role, as long as his character is vital to the script. He doesn’t have to be the hero either.
So, when it was time for Finals, a movie that was seen as a Rajisha Vijayan film before its release, Niranj happily joined in. “There was the State Award winning Rajisha on one side, the National Award winning Suraj Venjaramoodu on the other. That was a lot of pressure,” he says. Plus, there was his dad. But that doesn’t make much of a difference, Niranj says. He doesn’t come to Niranj with instructions or feedback, but leaves him alone to do his job. It was not, however, his dad’s film circles that he mentions when asked what put the idea of cinema into his head as a young boy. It’s his brother Sachin, who watches a lot of world cinema, and got Niranj hooked too. He is the shyer one though, not so keen to follow their dad's footsteps.
The usually critical Maniyanpilla
Not that he is uncomfortable expressing emotions. He has, for the moment, settled in as an actor, shelved his direction dreams for later, and is in talks with a popular filmmaker for his next.