Vijay Sethupathi  Insists On  Dubbing His Own Hindi Lines in Farzi

One  of  the many  pleasures of watching Raj and DK’s excellent  series  Farzi  on Amazon Prime  Video, is to see   the Tamil maestro  of naturalistic   acting Vijay Sethupathi speaking  in Hindi.

Vijay insisted  on speaking  his  own  lines in Hindi. He  says  he didn’t want to take the risk of letting someone else dub his lines, as then the performance  is bifurcated. “One  performance is  mine, the other is  a voice giving  another  dimension to  the character.”

 Vijay was adamant  he  wouldn’t  let anyone  dub his lines in  Hindi. “I made that mistake in my  film Telugu  film  Uppena  where I couldn’t dub my lines in Telugu.My  command over the language was  not good  enough. From now  onwards  I will  do my own lines, no matter what the language no matter what it takes.”

  Vijay doesn’t give undue importance  to the spoken  lines. “I believe acting is all about observation. To me the least important part of a performance is  the dialogue. I  feel words always  get in the way of the emotions. That’s why I enjoyed  shooting for  the Hindi film Gandhi Talks. It has  no  dialogues, It’s a silent  film.”

And not because Vijay can’t  speak Hindi.  “Jee nahin, meri Hindi  kafi  achchi  ho gayi hai(my Hindi has  really improved). I’ve been  working on  it(the  Hindi  language) for my other projects with Raj-DK and another Hindi film being directed by  Santosh Sivan.”

 Says Vijay, “I’ve always believed  that  for an actor  silences always speak louder than words.At least  it’s true of me. I always feel  the words come in the way  of expressing the feelings.I am at my most expressive when  I am  not speaking.”