Diverse Roles Help You Stay Relevant

R Madhavan, Kirti Kulhari, and Neil Nitin Mukesh reflect on their latest release Hisaab Barabar, how Madhavan chooses his scripts, Neil's approach to playing negative characters, Kirti's view on box-office numbers, and more

- SHREYAS PANDE

In the recently released comedy-drama Hisaab Barabar, R Madhavan plays Radhe Shyam, a sincere ticket checker in the Indian railways, who is obsessed with mathematics and numbers. He wants his accounts to be clear and his finances to be settled. So much so that when he sees a discrepancy of just ₹27 in his bank account, Radhe rushes to the bank with a written complaint.

In real life, however, Madhavan is not so good at maintaining his finances. Instead, his wife takes the lead in managing it. "I only get pocket money to spend every month," he smiles.

To play such a character, the actor had to change his body language. "I had to get rid of all the heroism in my body language for the film," he says, adding, "I started thinking like my father to deliver the lines."

His presence in the film is filled with a certain simplicity and charm. "For the role, I had to learn how it felt before I came into the industry where I was nervous about everything," he adds.

The actor's selection of scripts in the last few years has been strikingly varied. From a railway manager reacting to a gas tragedy in The Railway Men (2023) to playing a red-eyed devil in Ajay Devgn's