Why The Versatile Nithya Menen Hates Clichés

Brut India

"There is enough space for all kinds of stories." Actor Nithya Menen shared her experience of working in Amazon Prime Video's psychological thriller, Breathe: Into The Shadows.

Transcript

00:00It's very important to me that I play it very real, that I believe it first of all.

00:06Otherwise, it doesn't work for me.

00:08Hi, this is Nitya Menon for BROOD.

00:30Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, English and now I'm learning another language as well.

00:42I have a natural inclination towards learning languages.

00:56One thing I did feel was that somehow in OTT, there is enough space for all kinds of stories

01:04to be told.

01:05So there's enough space for a niche kind of a story or a niche content to be told.

01:13Somewhere in film, because of the vast audience that you need to sort of cater to, you sort

01:20of have to generalize things a little bit.

01:26So that makes you, you know, a little apologetic when you're doing things that are a bit unusual

01:33or a bit different.

01:34In OTT, it's a very unapologetic thing because, you know, everything is accepted, everything

01:40is allowed, even niche things are allowed.

01:48But I wanted to make sure that it's not, I would not do anything cliche.

01:54So I didn't want it to be a cliche thing, oh, I'm sad, you know, or I'm like you said,

02:00you know, melodrama, you know, I wanted to play it very real and very authentic.

02:07So I kept going back into myself and thinking, what if this was a situation you're put in?

02:14How would you react?

02:15What would you do?

02:16And then, you know, I sort of drew from that.

02:18And that's why, you know, I had to try really hard to make it very real because the circumstances

02:25are so unusual.

02:27It's not something that always happens.

02:38Why is he playing these mind games?

02:40I had to justify it first to myself.

02:43Like why would she decide to do this?

02:47Why would she make this choice?

02:50So while I'm justifying it to myself, the emotions naturally flow.

02:55Then I try to sort of, so it's very important to me that I play it very real, that I believe

03:02it first of all, you know, otherwise it doesn't work for me.

03:05I cannot give up just a performance.

03:08I can't just act, you know, externally like that.

03:13I can't wait to see what more I can do in this space and what more kind of characters

03:26that, you know, wouldn't have been otherwise maybe so accessible will now become, you know,

03:32because the characters, they're real characters.

03:34It's not just a hero, a heroine or something like that.

03:38They're real characters.

03:39So it's very exciting.

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