Iratta director: Transforming into two different people seamlessly is a testament to Joju George’s skill | Exclusive

The past few years, Malayalam actor Joju George has made it a habit to astound the audience with his performances. The actor is also one of those rare performers who seeks out challenging roles that push him out of his comfort zone. His upcoming movie Iratta is such an example.

Joju essays a double role for the first time in his career, in Rohit MG Krishnan’s debut directorial, which is a police story. The director, in an exclusive chat with OTTplay, tells us that the actor had a huge role in making the characters in Iratta work.

“While writing the script, we believed if we found a good artiste to play the role, it would take care of itself. Because the challenge is mostly for the artiste to turn into two different people,” says Rohit. “In Iratta, there isn't a massive change in the get-ups of both characters, like in previous movies with double roles. In this movie, they are twins and so they look alike.”

That said, it still required Joju to come up with changes while performing. “Joju ettan would do one role and then take a 10-minute break to change into the other character’s getup. But when he comes back and performs, he plays an entirely different character. He even takes care of the most minute nuances and I believe this has come out well because of how good an artiste he is,” says Rohit.

The director also explains that the team paid extra attention during the casting process, to ensure that actors who are stereotyped in a particular role weren’t cast. “We were clear that we didn’t want to rope in actors based on their previous characters. For instance, we didn’t want to cast an actor who has been playing a politician for years. We wanted fresh artistes to essay those parts. In Iratta, Srinda plays a minister and Arya Salim essays the role of a cop. We haven’t seen them in these roles earlier,” he says.

The movie was extensively shot in Elappara in Idukki. Ask Rohit if the film’s hilly terrain has a significance in the plot and he says, “It’s a story that can happen anywhere in India as it deals with human emotions. But when you watch the movie, it will be clear why we needed that particular location to tell this story.”

Iratta is set to hit theatres on February 3, along with Soubin Shahir’s Romancham, Vishnu Unnikrishnan’s Vedikettu and Anu Sithara’s Momo in Dubai.