Lal explains why he didn’t dub for his character in Karnan

After Karnan’s release on Amazon Prime Video on May 14, audiences have been lavishing praise on the cast of the Mari Selvaraj directorial, which talks about the people of an oppressed village in Tamil Nadu.

Lal put on a stand-out performance in the film as Yema Raja, the elder confidante to Dhanush’s Karnan. The Malayalam actor on Sunday, also explained on his social media page why unlike his previous ventures in Tamil, he didn’t dub for Karnan.

“As you all know Karnan is set in the backdrop of Tirunelveli; the dialect of Tamil spoken in Tirunelveli is very different from the Tamil spoken in Chennai. Even in Malayalam, if one is asked to speak in Thrissur dialect, it often ends up being a mere imitation, and nothing close to how a native of Thrissur would speak,” he wrote.

Lal also elaborated that the “language and culture is of great importance” in the movie and hence “a unique dialect of the Tamil language has to be spoken” to complete the character. “Majority of the cast were locals themselves; there was a good chance that my dubbing would have stood out from the rest of them. As I did not want to give anything less than my 100% for this movie, I was skeptical,” wrote Lal, who had dubbed for Karthi’s Sulthan earlier this year.

The Mollywood actor-director, however, also stated that due to the persistence of the crew including the director and producer, he did try dubbing. “However, it was for the good of the film, and also at my request, that the voice of a Tirunelveli native was used,” he wrote.

Karnan, which is already hailed as one of the best movies this year in Tamil, also has Mollywood actor Rajisha Vijayan, Yogi Babu and Lakshmi Priyaa Chandramouli in pivotal roles.