As thriving actor Vijay Sethupathi has been caught with unprecedented demand and outrage to drop Muthiah Muralidharan's biopic '800', a young Kollywood actor has now revealed that he was approached to act in the biopic and said he has declined to be a part owing to the political grounds that the movie exhibits.
Teejay Arunasalam is a London based actor and musician. He rose to fame among the Tamil audience through acting as Dhanush's elder son in Vetrimaaran's directorial 'Asuran', that was one of the movies that recorded a massive hit. Apart from Dhanush, Arunasalam had grabbed major attention through his acting and attained popularity. Amid the unrest around the '800' biopic, he has revealed that he was approached to act in the movie.
Speaking to a news agency, Arunachalam said that he was approached to play the younger version of Muthiah Muralidharan in 800. He said that the production house of the biopic had approached him when he was in India. He met the director in his office during which he was asked to play the younger version of the Sri Lankan cricketer in the movie while the elder version would be played by Vijay Sethupathi.
Arunachalam stated that the biopic had captured the civil war between the Tamil Eelam people and the Sri Lankan government. By citing that his mother belongs to Tamil Eelam, the young actor said that the war had a lot of cruelty involved and he stated that he declined to act in the movie under the grounds that he doesn't want to get involved in the politics of the movie.
The revelation has come at a high time when the movie has been surfaced with lurching and aberrant reception even before it started the shooting. Vijay Sethupathi has been centered at the outrage as he has been facing fierce demands to drop the biopic of Muthiah Muralidharan, who post his retirement, had turned out to be an ardent supporter of Sinhala leaders Rajapaksas who executed genocide and grave human rights violations and killed over a lakh of Tamil people in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka during the civil war.
Ever since Vijay Sethupathi was announced that he would be acting in the movie, he has been surfaced with major flak and outrage from his fans, fraternities, and the Tamil people with many demanding him to drop the movie and don't disrespect the Tamil people. When the production house had released the first motion poster of the movie, the outrage grown against the actor where Tweeple had trended the hashtags of #ShameonVijaySethupathi and #BoycottVijaySethupathi on Twitter to pressure the actor to avoid acting in the biopic.
After drawing flak, the production house Dar Motion pictures released a statement in which it had asserted that the movie would purely be a sports biography and assured that it won't showcase any scenes that will degrade the struggles of the Tamil Eelam people. However, their statement didn't turn to be an antidote to mitigate the outrage as it has been growing against the actor and the movie.
Tamil fraternities like directors Bharathiraja, Cheran, and Seenu Ramasamy, lyricist Vairamuthu, and political leaders like Seeman and Thol.Thirumavalavan had voiced against Vijay Sethupathi to avoid the movie while Tamil Nadu BJP leader Annamalai and veteran actress Radikaa Sarathkumar had come in support of the actor.
However, Vijay Sethupathi hadn't given any response on whether he would be dropping the movie or the demand. The biopic film has been titled as '800' to mark the number of wickets taken by Muralidharan in the test cricket. Directed by MS Sripathy, the biopic will be covering the struggles faced by the spinner and how he rose to popularity and become one of the legendary cricketers in history.
Comments