Inside Mohanlal’s shockingly vanilla Dubai press junket: Talks 'Vrusshabha' and success—No Dileep questions allowed

Dubai: There is a biting Malayalam saying: when a daughter is writhing in labour pain, the mother is busy playing the violin. Another version is even starker: when your house is on fire, you are outside planting banana trees.

A disturbingly apt version of that proverb played out in Dubai when local media was invited to cover the press junket for Mohanlal’s sweeping period saga Vrusshabha, out in UAE cinemas on December 25.

The burning question in the room—unspoken but impossible to ignore—had little to do with trailers, genres, or pan-Indian ambitions. It was this: why did Mohanlal choose to act alongside Dileep, the recently acquitted actor in Kerala’s most controversial sexual assault case? Was this a quiet rehabilitation enabled by star clout? And does a cultural institution like Mohanlal, who in an earlier interview with Gulf News dismissed #MeToo as a fad, carry a larger moral responsibility in an industry still reckoning with power, silence, and accountability?

But even before the press conference at Star Cinemas, Al Ghurair Centre, could properly unfold, the rules were laid down—firmly and repeatedly.

Host and actor RJ Mithun issued what effectively functioned as a gag order, reminding journalists at least four times to restrict questions strictly to the film. No diversions. No context. No discomfort. The insistence was so persistent it stopped sounding procedural and began to feel preventative.

What followed was one of the most sanitised, vanilla, and openly psychophantic press interactions imaginable.

The journalist in you didn’t merely step aside—it died, packed its bags, and went on vacation.

Instead of scrutiny, we were offered philosophy.

Mohanlal, marking nearly 48 years in cinema, spoke about discipline and destiny, delivering lines that were sincere, polished, and impossible to disagree with.

“Work, work, work—that’s the only mantra,” he said. “There are no shortcuts to success. You have to work hard. That commitment—that fire—you should carry it within you. This is my 48th year.”

He dismissed the idea of industry hacks or inherited wisdom.

“No tips. No shortcuts,” he reiterated. “Please don’t spoil them by giving shortcuts.”

Luck, he said, was neither accidental nor transactional.

“Luck is not just a word. It’s a blessing. Even if you work hard, sometimes you don’t get a good role. Getting a good role itself is a blessing. It’s about commitment, desire—asking nature. Many combinations come together.”

Notably absent was any engagement with the moral context surrounding the film.

Mohanlal did, however, acknowledge the strangeness of Vrusshabha—though strictly in creative terms.

“There are so many strange things about this film,” he said. “I’ll tell you one thing—in the entire group, I am the only person who speaks Malayalam, and we are doing a Malayalam film.”

He broke down the project’s unlikely geography with amusement.

“The director, Nandakishore, is from Karnataka. He’s a Kannada filmmaker. I am a Malayalam actor. We are doing a Telugu film with a North Indian production house,” he said. “This is a perfect pan-Indian film—or what I would call a beautiful congress of beautiful people.”

Even the narrative surprised him.

“When Nandakishore was narrating the story, I was surprised. The story itself is strange,” Mohanlal said.

“When you watch the trailer, you may think it’s about reincarnation—and yes, it touches that—but the concept is very different. Doing something like this in Malayalam itself is new.”

Difference, experimentation, and novelty were welcome talking points. Accountability was not.

Producer Ekta Kapoor, whose Balaji Telefilms is entering Malayalam cinema with Vrusshaba, leaned fully into reverence. Arriving fashionably late, a Birkin bag resting on her lap, she spoke glowingly of destiny and legacy.

“To be on this platform with so many great actors, and above all with a legend like Mohanlal sir, is a huge honour,” she said. “For Balaji to step into the Malayalam film industry with the man who is most revered—Lalettan—feels like a sign of God.”

She praised the industry’s creative output without reservation.

“The best content in India today is Malayalam content,” Kapoor declared. “And the one synonymous with that legacy is Mohanlal sir. To associate with him for our first Malayalam film—it feels like we are blessed.”

The room nodded along.

Director Nandakishore spoke about emotional truth and old-school values, carefully steering the conversation back to sentiment.

“Everything starts with an idea,” he said. “When you observe people—their bonding, their emotions—you try to bring real emotions out. That’s what holds the audience.”

He framed the film as a response to changing family structures. “Earlier, it was joint families. Today, relationships have thinned into micro-families,” he said. “I am old school. I want to bring families back together. I want to see families in theatres again.”

Asked if he wrote the script with Mohanlal in mind, he clarified:

“I don’t write scripts with actors in mind,"

“I write the character. I write the story. I write it like a book. The actor comes later.” But he also felt that Mohanlal could do justice to his lead character.

“If you have written a subject like this—who can be a king, who can be a modern father, who can be an action father, who can express pain just through his eyes—then you name an actor,” he said, pausing long enough for the answer to be obvious.

Applause followed.

There was even a light moment involving Jeetendra, Ekta Kapoor’s father, who reportedly praised Mohanlal’s Hindi delivery after watching the trailer and joked that he should sing in a future film. Kapoor laughed, saying she would gladly request Mohanlal to do her next movie—whatever he wants to do in it.

And just like that, the evening wrapped up—smooth, respectful, immaculately managed.

While we admired discipline, destiny, reincarnation, and pan-Indian collaboration, the most urgent questions remained untouched. The violin played on. The banana saplings were carefully planted.

And somewhere between applause lines and pre-approved questions, journalism quietly slipped out of the room.