Critics come and go but Shweta Menon goes on forever. A much trimmed down Shweta is now all set to walk the ramps and is also “game to play something even raunchier than Rathinirvedam”. In conversation with Shweta Menon, who will also be seen playing a man’s role in Ranjilal Damodaran’s Naval Enna Jewel, which has an international cast.
You played a major part in kicking off the trend of woman-oriented films in Malayalam. But you suddenly disappeared. Why?
Well, I was sick and tired of the ‘bold’ characters that kept coming to me. I wanted to do something lighter, like in Salt N’ Pepper, or even something raunchier than Rathinirvedam. But it had to be something different. I love that I am being offered films but I just couldn’t do the ‘cotton sari-strong woman’ role again. As an artiste, there is nothing more I can offer there. But the same thing in a bigger canvas was something that hooked me, and that was why I took up Naval Enna Jewel.
There is a lot of curiosity surrounding your role in Naval Enna Jewel. Is it true that you are playing a man?
It has a fascinating story. My character is that of a girl who grew up in Kerala till she is 12 years old and was married off to a 65-year-old Arab. She has a baby when she is just 14 and a half. Thus the mother and child grow up together, literally. The so-called husband dies in a few years and the story is about what happens afterwards. She has forgotten Malayalam and yet doesn’t know any other language properly. But she has to survive in an alien land, with a baby in tow.
Society looks at such a child as one without a father and so she turns into her father. The movie is also about the difference in the way society perceives a single father and a single mother. I have tried my best to pull off the character.
How was it to have international actors like Adil Hussain and Reem Kadem as co-stars?