The Hunt - The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case actor Bagavathi Perumal: How well a supporting role is written is criteria to judge good writing

Actor Bagavathi Perumal from the Tamil film industry, has already seen six releases in this year as 2025 crosses the half-way mark. After starring in successful films like Tourist Family and Kuberaa, his recent release is The Hunt - The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case , a SonyLIV series based on true incidents when the former Prime Minister was assassinated as a result of a suicide bombing in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu.

While you can stream the series on OTTplay Premium, Bagavathi Perumal played the role of K Ragothaman, one a CBI officer who was part of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing into the case of the infamous assassination.

Bagavathi Perumal Interview:

Speaking about how he got involved into the project, Bagavathi Perumal says that it was through a casting call followed by an audition through which he bagged the role. “I had performed some interrogation scenes and sent to the casting call team. They were the ones who did casting for Monica, O My Darling as well, so I had a good rapport with them. They had given the character details, and I had performed accordingly.”

The actor says that Ragothaman played an important role in the case investigation and one who performed the field work. “Luckily, there are many interviews of him available on YouTube. After retirement, he was open to talking about his work. This had helped me to get as much information as possible for my role,” says Bagavathi Perumal.

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But even before this, Bagavathi Perumal had been aware of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case even since it took place, and this is because the actor’s father was a BSNL employee. As he says it was a classic case reverse engineering where he knew much about the role even before he took up the character as opposed to doing research after bagging the role, Bagavathi Perumal said, “Even before the radio announced it, we had come to know about the assassination before it was announced. Since Rajiv Gandhi case is the first major bomb blast incident recorded in Tamil Nadu, the case was even more talked about at that time. Given the political history with LTTE as a state, we were well connected and aware of the events more than the north India, both politically and emotionally.”

Bagavathi Perumal talks about how casting has become a process even in south industry. “In south, we may not have an explicit position called casting director, because mostly associate directors do the role. For Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom, the casting was done by Tughlaq Durbar director Delhi Prasad. The benefit of casting agencies is only that they have a database of artistes and it comes handy.”

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Why south is yet to pick up on OTT space

It is also evident that while the Hindi industry has adapted OTT space in form of films and series, the trend is yet to pick up down south. Bagavathi Perumal recalls talking with veteran filmmaker KS Ravikumar telling how the efforts of making four films goes into making one web series but the monetary returns are much lesser. “There are budget and markets in the Hindi market. For someone like actor Manoj Bajpayee, he did not get hid due credit in his films because he was performance oriented. But after doing a web series like Family Man, his market skyrocketed. But this is not a pattern in Tamil.” Adding that budget is a crucial point in making films and web series, Bagavathi Perumal says that it the allocation of budget is different from north and south market.

Back to speaking about playing Ragothaman, the actor says the real-life officer who was precise on not having a personal opinion on the case and take a neutral stance. “He was representing India in the case, and his aim is to only find the culprit. He did not give space for personal opinion. In this web series, there are multiple characters and Ragothaman’s work has been distributed across, so that it does not make it one-sided.”

Having starred in films like Super Deluxe, 96, Tourist Family, and Blue Star, he says that stories cannot be written without supporting characters. “How long would the story ride on just hero and heroine. As much as supporting characters get interesting, it shows in the story as well. Every good film will have a detailed supporting character, in fact it becomes a benchmark or criteria to judge a writing; how meaningful the characters are, why they are present. If they are present just for the sake of it, then it reflects poorly on the overall story. It won’t excite us.”

Hence, naturally Bagavathi Perumal feels that series format gives an upper hand to explore every character in detail, because the long format does not allow one to travel along with one character like in films. “In films, the time constraint is limited, and audience are asked to follow the protagonist. In web series, every character gets a defining arc even if they are supporting character.”

Concluding, Bagavathi Perumal says that working in Hunt made him feel astonished of the officials who worked relentlessly during a time when technology was not so advanced. “They excelled and managed to find the culprits of this high-profile case and importance of their intelligence.”