Vismaya Mohanlal, Ashish Joe Antony on Thudakkam, star-kid privilege: 'Didn't know if I would be welcomed'

Privilege may have opened a door, but Thudakkam, now out in UAE cinemas, is where Vismaya and Ashish have to prove what they can do once they walk through it.

And, pleasantly, they do.

The survival thriller revolves around Meenu, a woman whose seemingly idyllic existence is upended by a creepy, predatory man. But beneath its thriller mechanics is a conversation that is depressingly familiar to women: who carries the responsibility for women’s safety? Why, when a woman is violated, are her clothes, choices and character so often put on trial? Why does the onus of avoiding violence somehow fall upon the person subjected to it?

For Vismaya and Ashish, one of the most gratifying reactions has come from young women and girls leaving cinemas wanting to learn how to defend themselves.

“The coolest part is seeing women and girls coming out of the theaters saying that they’re inspired to learn martial arts now,” Vismaya told Gulf News.

Ashish has witnessed that response first-hand during theatre visits.

“There were few small girls who came forward and they were like, ‘We’re gonna start learning now,’ and that was something that made us all happy to hear,” he said.

And it isn’t just young girls.

“Boys and girls of any age, they have come forward saying that, yeah, we need to learn at least some sort of self-defense to live in this current society,” Ashish added.

When the victim ends up on trial

Some of Thudakkam’s most uncomfortable moments aren’t necessarily its violent ones. They come afterwards, when Meenu — whose space and safety have already been violated — suddenly finds her own character being scrutinised.

It’s an infuriatingly recognisable pattern.

What was she wearing? Why was she there? Did she invite the man in? Did she somehow encourage what happened?

The questions shift almost imperceptibly from what was done to a woman to what the woman supposedly did wrong.

Vismaya believes the film works because it doesn’t treat that reaction as some distant social problem.

“It reflects on what happens. It’s something very real that actually happens, and to see it so plainly put, you can relate to that and see that that is something in our society,” she said.

But Meenu’s story isn’t simply about what happens to her. For Vismaya, it is also about refusing to be permanently defined by it.

“Meenu’s story is also about moving past all that, like not giving up,” she said.

The martial-arts element then becomes more than an action-film device.

Vismaya began learning Muay Thai around 2020, although executing choreographed fights for a movie required an entirely different discipline. She is also refreshingly unwilling to sell the idea that knowing martial arts automatically makes a woman invincible.

Asked whether her training meant she could necessarily fight off an attacker in real life, she admitted she simply doesn’t know.

“If that situation is to happen, I don’t know how I would react,” she said.

But repetition and muscle memory can matter.

“Because I have learned martial arts, it’s repetition, right? So you’re doing these movements over and over and over, and it’s in your body. So I think your reflexes somehow will do something.”

Then comes perhaps the most sensible takeaway.

“If you learn this, it’s giving yourself a chance.”

‘I didn’t know if I would be welcomed’

For Vismaya, Thudakkam also represents a very different kind of leap.

Despite growing up with one of Indian cinema’s most recognisable actors as her father, she didn’t race towards the movies.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” she said.

But wanting it and believing she could do it were two different things.

“I was just not confident enough to make the plunge. I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t know if I would be welcomed. I didn’t know if I would fit in because I never lived in Kerala.”

It’s an unexpectedly vulnerable admission from someone whose surname might lead outsiders to assume that confidence — and a place in cinema — came automatically.

Then Thudakkam landed in her life.

“When the script came, then I was like, wow, okay, it’s now or never. I just have to go for it,” she said.

The director’s faith helped when she laid out her doubts.

“He’s like, ‘No, just come as you are. Just show up. We’ll do it.’”

There is also something quietly appealing about Vismaya beginning this chapter of her life in her 30s, particularly in an industry — and a society — fond of handing women invisible deadlines.

She has little patience for them.

I don’t think there should ever be an age for starting something,” she said.

“All these checklists, I just don’t get it. Who says that you can’t start new things when you’re 30 or 40 or 50… or 60?”

If women watching her take that leap feel encouraged, she’s happy.

Ashish: ‘I had no plans to act’

Ashish’s route to Thudakkam was almost the opposite.

“I didn’t have any plans to act. To be honest, that’s the complete honest truth,” he said.

The confidence shown in him by the director and his family helped convince him that he might fit the character. But he is remarkably candid about the biggest reason he finally agreed.

“If Vismaya wasn’t part of this movie, there was a high chance, or most probably, I would have said no because I had no plans to act,” Ashish said.

“We all love her so much, and she’s such an amazing person.”

It’s one of those moments that explains all the “Maya Chechi” and “Joko” business better than any carefully packaged answer about co-star chemistry could.

That affection is very much mutual.

Ashish plays a deeply disturbing man with remarkably little dialogue, meaning the menace has to come largely through his physicality, his eyes and his stillness.

Vismaya couldn’t stop praising him.

“He has really good control with his body language,” she said.

“I was in awe. From every scene that I saw him in, he’s so menacing.”

Perhaps the biggest compliment to Ashish is how far removed that character seems from the genial young man sitting beside Vismaya during the interview.

His preparation, however, took him into considerably darker territory.

When the conversation turned to true-crime documentaries and portrayals of cold-blooded killers with little apparent remorse, Ashish revealed that he had been watching them too.

“These were my researches,” he said. “I’ve taken out a lot of references and I’ve learned so much out of it because that’s my preparation.”

With hardly any dialogue to hide behind, his biggest concern was establishing the character from the moment audiences first encountered him.

“I was really worried about the introduction,” he said.

But eventually, the lack of dialogue became liberating.

“Not having a dialogue was actually more fun. I was able to just go with the free flow.”

Mohanlal’s cameo — does Meenu need rescuing?

Then there is Mohanlal.

His appearance in Thudakkam is obvious fan service on one level, but in a movie so invested in a woman’s agency, it also invites an uncomfortable question: does a woman fighting to reclaim her power need one of Malayalam cinema’s biggest male stars to enter the picture?

It was a question put directly to Vismaya and Ashish.

Vismaya doesn’t see the sequence as a male saviour arriving to rescue Meenu.

“A big part of it is, of course, for the fans, but also when you look at martial arts, especially, it’s a lot of it is about your coach,” she said.

“It’s passed on from your coach to the student, and I actually thought that was a really beautiful moment.”

There was also a far more personal reason why she never questioned the cameo.

“One of my dreams was to act with my dad, so I was very, very much excited and happy,” she said.

Ashish similarly views the sequence through the relationship between teacher and student.

“A master is coming back to give back the confidence,” he said.

“You’re always learning. You’re a student throughout your life.”

Don’t pit women-led movies against each other

Success, inevitably, brings numbers. And numbers bring comparisons.

As Thudakkam began attracting attention, there were comparisons with the performance of other women-led Malayalam movies.

Vismaya wants no part of turning those achievements into a competition.

“I don’t like that whole competitive thing because what Kalyani did was incredible,” she said, referring to Kalyani Priyadarshan.

“I don’t want to ever take away from that or anything like that. I think we can appreciate both, and it doesn’t have to be this or that.”

It’s another revealing moment.

For two people born remarkably close to the machinery of stardom, neither appears particularly eager to perform stardom.

Ask whether the reception to Thudakkam now makes them feel like stars and there’s almost an instinctive reluctance to embrace the label.

Vismaya isn’t obsessively counting box-office milestones either.

“Of course, I’m super happy that this is doing really well and all of that. But I don’t think either of us are counting the numbers,” she said.

Ashish, as a producer’s son, laughingly concedes that numbers inevitably enter the conversation.

But they only matter once the movie itself works.

“Ultimately, we want the movie to work, and that’s all what matters to us,” he said. “If the people get a message out of this, then we have done a good job.”

Has the acting bug bitten Vismaya?

Emphatically, yes.

“I loved it, like I loved it so much,” she said.

She remembers being on set with Joko — before once again correcting herself to Ashish — and looking around in disbelief that they were actually doing this.

“I want to continue doing it,” she said.

The machinery surrounding acting is another matter.

“I don’t know so much about this part of it, like the cameras in your face, the interviews, things like that. I’m not so sure about.”

But the actual acting?

“Hundred per cent. I loved it.”

Perhaps that is what makes Vismaya Mohanlal and Ashish Joe Antony intriguing at this particular moment.

Their privilege isn’t invisible, nor should anyone pretend it is. They were born with access that countless aspiring actors would give anything for. Their famous families will inevitably amplify curiosity around their work, and their surnames will probably continue entering rooms before they do.

But access can only take you to the door. What happens once you walk through it is eventually visible to an audience.

With Thudakkam, Vismaya has chosen to begin her acting journey with Meenu, a woman who refuses to remain a victim. Ashish has gone against his seemingly sweet off-screen nature to play someone audiences can genuinely loathe.

And through a conversation punctuated by teasing, “Maya Chechis”, “Jokos”, mutual compliments and an almost endearing reluctance to call themselves stars, they leave another impression behind.

Yes, they are star kids.

But they are also two young actors trying to figure out what they can do with the privilege they’ve inherited.

The famous surnames may enter the room first.

Thudakkam suggests Vismaya and Ashish would quite like audiences to remember the people carrying them.