Chennai Express Star Sathyaraj Reveals Not Being Sure About The Film, But He Did It Due To Shah Rukh Khan(Pic Credit: Poster)
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Popular veteran actor Sathyaraj who has worked in more than 200 films gained overnight recognition among Hindi speaking audiences after he played Kattappa in Baahubali. However, it was then people realised that before working in Prabhas starrer, he acted in Chennai Express. In a recent interview, the actor makes shocking claims that he didn’t think that his character was great, he also revealed the sole reason for doing the film was SRK.
Directed by Rohit Shetty, the action-comedy also featured Deepika Padukone as Meenamma while the South actor played her father, along with Nikitin Dheer in a supporting role. Although the film received mixed reviews from critics and audiences but it is among the highest-grossing Bollywood films of all time worldwide.
Coming back to the topic, Baahubali fame Sathyaraj recently spoke with ETimes, he also shared why he wasn’t sure to work in the Shah Rukh Khan starrer, he told, “When the makers approached me for ‘Chennai Express’, I heard the story and I felt that it was not that great a role for me.”
Sathyaraj added, “I conveyed this to the director (Rohit Shetty) and also to Shah Rukh Khan, but I eventually did the film (Chennai Express) because I like Shah Rukh very much. I like SRK’s acting a lot. His films, like ‘DDLJ’ and several others, did extremely well.”
On the other hand, the actor was even asked about the recent debate surrounding North vs South films. Talking about the same, the actor says, “That’s all created by the media. We are actors and we act in films. People watch movies and enjoy them, it is only the media which wants to divide South and North films. As a fan, I always liked watching Amitabh Bachchan’s movies, Dharmendra, Dev Anand, and Shatrughan Sinha films.”
“The emergence of South cinema’s popularity also stems from the lockdown. It was during that period that people didn’t know what to do sitting at home. So they started watching movies of different languages. I watched a Punjabi and Gujarati movie while being at home. This is good for regional cinema because only when regional films do well people will get to know stories of the soil. Otherwise, films will continue to tell general stories. Only when regional cinema succeeds is when real stories of our country will come to the fore,” Sathyaraj concluded.
