Why was actor R. Madhavan asked to keep his marriage a secret when he made his film debut?
Thanks to INKtalks for the footage.
Thanks to INKtalks for the footage.
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00:00The film flopped so badly that the whole studio closed down after that.
00:06They said, no, no, no married actor has ever made it in the film industry as a romantic hero.
00:10The girls will take an aversion for you. It is not going to work out.
00:18There is an interesting phrase you came out for the people who asked you to do the movie.
00:23Can you tell me a little bit about that?
00:25When I first started my career in Tamil, my first film Alaipayadi had become a big hit.
00:30As did the next film I did called Minnale.
00:33And then I had no advisors in the film industry because I was breaking ground.
00:38I was one of those guys people thought would never make it as a Tamil actor.
00:42Simply because a very interesting story.
00:44During the release of my first film I was coming out with a romantic film.
00:48It was a romantic film with Shalini.
00:50And the PR department when they came to brief I said,
00:53whatever you do Madhavan, don't tell them that you got married four months ago.
00:56So I said, why?
00:58They said, no, no, no married actor has ever made it in the film industry as a romantic hero.
01:02The girls will take an aversion for you. It is not going to work out.
01:05And I am not very comfortable with a lie.
01:09And especially about a woman who is part of my life.
01:12And to ignore her and to tell the audiences that my wife is not something that I was going to do at all.
01:17So I went and told Mani Ratnam. I said, Mani sir, this is what they are saying.
01:20Do you want me to comply?
01:22And he said, you do whatever you want.
01:23I said, okay.
01:25So sure enough, the first question that they asked me in that publicity meet was,
01:31we believe you got married four months ago.
01:33What do you have to say? Who is your wife?
01:35So I told the media then.
01:37I said, I am very sorry that I am going against the wishes of my PR department, but I am married.
01:42My wife's name is Sarita.
01:44We were going around for nine years and we got married and this is it.
01:47I was told that the Tamil audiences will not accept me if I told them that I was a married actor.
01:52But you know, I am an actor. I cannot undermine or insult my wife.
01:56At the same time, I want the Tamil audiences to like my movies.
02:00So in all humility, I am married and I hope that they accept me for who I am.
02:06And more than the film, that line became so popular that I became instantly popular with the ladies when the first film started.
02:14So now everybody thought, okay, this guy has changed the rules over there.
02:18So the people who are coming to me were saying, you cannot be Rajinikanth till you do films that work in the B&C center.
02:26You know, the villages have to accept you. Only when they go to Talaiwa, will you become a South superstar?
02:30So obviously I was getting all this data, which was telling me, do films for the villages.
02:35So behave like somebody in the villages and stuff.
02:37So I accepted a film where I was playing a guy who was struggling to, you know, feed himself,
02:43who was weak, who was uneducated, who was not studying, but who had a dream of becoming a cricketer.
02:48So that was the film that I was doing. The film flopped so badly that, you know, the whole studio closed down after that.
02:57So I suddenly realized this is, you know, that I should never become what I become,
03:02which are the term that I started to use a lot now, which is called in Hindi, data ke tattu,
03:08which means idiots who do not know how to interpret the data. Everybody has data.
03:15Your interpretation and the inferences of those interpretations will determine how successful you are.
03:20So while all they were telling me was true, what I had to do was not that.
03:25I had to interpret the data separately and make my own kind of B&C center film.
03:29So that film taught me tremendously with a big slap on my face what I needed to do next.