Sabumon Abdusamad first acted in a film in 2002, which was also one of Prithviraj’s early films - Nakshathrakkannulla Rajakumaran Avanundoru Rajakumari. More than 10 years later, he was acting in his third film Punyalan Agarbattis. But this year alone – 2019 -- he has about eight movies in his filmography, four or five of them happening at the same time.
“It must be my stint in Bigg Boss,” he says. Sabumon was the winner of the first Malayalam season of Bigg Boss, a reality TV show where participants live in a closed house and are made to do various tasks without contact with the outside world. Vijay Babu, actor and producer, announced during the Bigg Boss final show that he would take Sabumon on board for his next production, Janamaithri. Sabumon played a policeman called Ashraf in the comedy, giving company to a man who has to find a toilet well past midnight in a strange land.
Read: Now on Amazon Prime, Malayalam comedy ‘Janamaithri’ shouldn't be missed
But then, Sabumon says he has always been a television person, not a ‘cinema guy’. He came from television, he grew through television. Sabumon hosted the first hidden camera reality show in Malayalam, when he would approach unsuspecting people on the street, lead them into conversation or action for a while before showing them the camera. The show was so popular that he was known by its name for a long time – Tharikida.
It’s a show that made us laugh, but Sabumon says he is terrified of doing comedy. Like the role he played for Janamaithri. “Each and every moment was supported by my co-actor Saiju Kurup. I was so tense,” Sabumon says.
What he prefers instead are hardcore villain roles, like the one he’s done in Lijo Jose Pellissery’s new film Jallikattu. The movie has won lots of appreciation at the Toronto International Film Festival where it premiered. “Lijo and I go way back, we have known each other for so many years. I played a role in his film Double Barrel too,” Sabumon says.
The year that Double Barrel came also had been good for Sabumon – four movies that year. But then, he has not been entirely popular on social media. “I am sort of a rebel, I speak my mind. It would not be taken well. But then people saw me for what I really am in Bigg Boss. They understood,” he says.
It was a psychological experiment for him, taking part in Bigg Boss. There were some ‘disturbances’ but ultimately these have helped him, Sabumon says. And it’s brought him movies. He names a few of them – Sachi’s Ayyappanum Koshiyum, where he plays his favourite ‘gunda’ role, Idi Mazha Kattu by a new director called Ambily S Rengan, and written by a National Award winning writer Amal (‘I am one in many characters’), Swathanthryam Ardharathriyil’s director Tinu Pappachan’s next, Upacharapoorvam Gunda Jayan where he’d once again work with Saiju Kurup for a comedy. There is also Thrissur Pooram, produced again by Vijay Babu and Omar Lulu’s Dhamaka.
Sabumon who is modest and minimal with his words when it’s about cinema, however, becomes talkative when the topic of rationalism is brought up. He recently attended a programme by Essence, a rationalist group. “What many people don’t understand is that atheism and rationalism are two different concepts. You don’t become an atheist if you are a rationalist, who believes in logic. Most often, rationalist groups too behave like a religion, aggressively attacking people of different faiths. Essence is an exception. What I believe in is science, that’s my where my interest is. Science has given to the world what god has not, in the last 100 years.”