New Delhi: Prakash Varma is your kindly next-door uncle—until he smiles. That’s when his unhurried villainy shines through. At 52, Varma made his acting debut this year as the corrupt cop George in Mohanlal’s latest thriller, Thudarum. It’s the first Malayalam film to earn Rs 100 crore at the Kerala box office. And Varma has become the toast of the town.
“My daughter Maya was seated next to me when we watched the film. In the scene where I tortured Lalitha (Shobhana) and Pavithra (Amritha Varshini), she was trying to move away from me. Later, she said she was scared of me,” said Varma.
His villainy is captured when Mohanlal’s character, a taxi driver whom everyone calls Benz, comes to the police station to claim his black Ambassador Mark 1. He’s an ordinary man—a family man—doing his best to protect the people he loves. But George threatens his idyllic life. With every twist, the plot gets edgier, darker and more menacing.
“Are you a goonda?” George asks Benz with a benign smile before letting him leave with his car. A few minutes later, the camera closes in on Varma. He’s still smiling, but now it is eerie and menacing. And the viewer gets a glimpse of the true George–a conniving and cruel circle inspector.
When the movie was released on 25 April, he made headlines in newspapers across India: ‘Who is Prakash Varma?’, ‘Meet Prakash Varma.’ Such has been the impact of his performance that his phone has not stopped buzzing. Kerala’s film industry A-listers, from Fahadh Faasil and Soubin Shahir to Suraj Venjaramoodu and Manju Warrier, called up Varma to congratulate him on his exceptional performance.
It’s rare for an actor to hold his own against heavyweights like Shobana and Mohanlal. It’s even rarer for an untested actor to achieve this. But then, Varma is no stranger to the camera of the thrum and scrum of a shoot. The award-winning ad filmmaker from Kerala has worked on campaigns for Vodafone with its iconic zoozoos. His Hutch ads with a boy and his pet dog sparked a craze for pugs in India. His ad for Dubai tourism featuring Shah Rukh Khan was a hit. And he’s worked on campaigns for brands ranging from Apple to KitKat.
But it was still a huge risk for the filmmakers to cast an unknown face. That was deliberate, said director Tharun Moorthy.
“George’s character is manipulative and narcissistic. I did not want an actor people have already seen. I wanted the element of surprise. When a stranger disrupts the happy family, he needs to be a stranger for audiences too,” said Moorthy.
His gamble paid off. Audiences would fall in hate with George.
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An audition and a demand
It was Moorthy’s co-writer, K R Sunil, who suggested Varma for the role. As they worked on the script for eight months, shaping George’s character, Moorthy developed two clear ideas of what the villain should look like.
“My requirements were that he either be a tall guy, in his 50s, who is physically strong, hair still black and a certain kind of moustache. Or a thin, tall man, who is inconspicuous, but with a sharp brain because manipulation is the key,” said Moorthy.
Once he saw a picture of Varma, he knew he had found his George. He didn’t have a luxurious moustache, but fit every other criteria.
The next challenge was to convince the celebrated ad filmmaker to step out from behind the camera into the spotlight. At the same time, Varma was keen on making a feature film. Moorthy and Sunil went to Mumbai to meet him. When he heard the story, Varma was hooked. He was impressed by the director’s clarity of vision. But he hemmed and hawed— he was no actor.
“I knew it was a very important film for Tharun, and with a big star cast. I was excited, but I wondered what if I waste everyone’s time? ” said Varma. He decided to give it a shot. But he had one condition—he wanted to audition.
“We were convinced already, but Prakash wanted us to see his audition. We enacted a few scenes from the scripts, shot it, and sent it to the producer M Ranjeeth,” recalled Moorthy.
He had one demand—grow a moustache. Varma joined the cast 15-20 days after shooting began in May 2024.
Moorthy and Varma had discussed a few improvisations from the script for the first scene he shot with Monahlal, which coincidentally was the scene that introduces his character in the movie—when Benz comes to the station to claim his Ambassador. “Are you a gunda?’ was not part of the script. But Varma didn’t stop there. “Will you beat me up?” he added, continuing with his banter.
“The moment the shot ended, Mohanlal called out to Tharun and said, ‘Sir, he is calling me gunda’,” said Varma, with a laugh, adding that Mohanlal did not know about his discussions with the director. It established a camaraderie that continued through the shoot. The new villain and the veteran actor would laugh, joke and watch social media videos together.
The film’s nostalgic appeal with the AI-generated poster of a younger version of Shobhana and Mohanlal, the script and the performance of the mysterious new villain quickly made it a must-watch movie, and not just in Kerala. Critics praised his performance. Anandu Suresh, in his review for The Indian Express, declared he was one of the most vicious villains to have ever come out of Malayalam cinema, and could be ranked among the greats like Paul Pailokkaran (Thilakan) in Namukku Parkkan Munthirithoppukal (1986) and Bhaskara Pattelar (Mammootty) in Vidheyan (1994).
As the movie builds to the climax, Varma matches Mohanlal in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that has viewers on the edge of their seats. Mohanlal might be the star of the film, but Varma steals the thunder on many occasions—this was the audience’s collective verdict.
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A lifetime behind the camera
As a child growing up in Alappuzha, Varma was always drawn to storytelling. His father, a physics professor, was also an artist. His uncle was the late actor Jagannatha Varma. But despite his family’s artistic bent, he couldn’t stray from the tried-and-tested path mapped out for children from south Indian families. He wanted to join the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, but it was not an option. Instead, he graduated in Zoology, started his career as a medical representative in Torrent Pharmaceuticals and later moved to Pfizer in Bengaluru.
However, he never forgot his first love—stories. Varma would save money and fly down to Kerala to meet filmmakers and work on sets on weekends. That was in the 1990s. But after assisting filmmakers AK Lohithadas and Viji Thampi, he realised that feature films were a long and time-consuming journey. He decided to switch to ad films because of their shorter turnaround time. That prompted him to join VK Prakash’s Trends Ad Film Makers in Bengaluru before eventually opening Nirvana Films in 2001 with his wife Sneha Iype in the city.
Iype and Varma met in Trends. “I remember once walking into the office, and he was in the courtyard, and he whistled. I turned around, said ‘disgusting’ and stormed into Prakash’s office to ask who this arrogant guy was. I was later told it was the resident parrot, Kookie, that was whistling,” said Iype with a laugh.
The two soon started working on projects together and eventually fell in love. The duo set up Nirvana films in 2001 and produced their first ad for Hindustan Unilever, followed by a Lakme ad featuring Yana Gupta.
But it was the 2003 Hutch ad, titled ‘You and I In This Beautiful World’, with the pug and a young boy, that helped put them on the advertising map.
With an eye for the unexpected, Varma recalled catching a scene when the little dog chased after the boy and fell off the steps in a hurry to get to him. Overnight, pugs became the most sought-after pets across India, and Hutch became a household name.
His Greenply commercial was the inspiration for director Lijo Jose Pellissery’s widely acclaimed Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (2022). Vodafone’s Zoozoos became viral at a time when smartphones weren’t commonplace. Varma also became the go-to director for state tourism ads from Kerala to Rajasthan to West Bengal and even Dubai with Shah Rukh Khan. Before reels became a thing, he started making 10 second-ads for Facebook, called thumbstoppers.
“The beauty of what we share is that there is a great exchange of learning we have. I have learnt and continue to learn a whole lot of stuff from him. My understanding of cinema, of minute details, of the value of perfectionism, etc comes from watching him in life and at work,” said Iype.
One of his iconic ads was a collaboration with his ‘hero’ Piyush Pandey, executive chairman (India) of Ogilvy. It was Indian Railways’ first TV ad.
Pandey received the request to make the ad, and he called up Varma, with a deadline of a mere four days. They came up with the idea of the train-like human chain, meandering through the streets of Kolkata. It was based on the song Rail Gaadi Chhuk Chhuk Chhuk, from the movie Aashirwad (1968). The ad won a Gold Lion for India in the Film Craft category at Cannes Lions in 2011.
“Varma’s USP is his pure commitment and the ability to look at the finer details. He loves a good challenge, and whatever he takes on, he has the ability to create a strong visual along with his storytelling,” said Pandey.
Over the years, Iype and Varma’s brand has been voted the No 1 Production House in the Economic Times Brand Equity multiple times.
“Approach me with challenges that no one has done before. That’s the secret to getting the best work out of me,” said Varma, with a laugh.
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A recognisable face
For all his experience, being in front of the camera and sharing the screen with Mohanlal was daunting. Iype was concerned about how her husband would manage long outdoor shoots. Comfort is a big thing for him, she said.
“He called me on the second day and said it was like a homecoming. That reassured me that the shoot would work out okay,” she said. The family also travelled all the way to Kerala to watch Varma in action.
“It was the scene where he walks behind Mohanlal and twists his ear. I am a Mohanlal fan, and I was very angry. I was also wondering if people would take it well, watching him treat Mohanlal like that,” said Iype.
The new moustache may have worked for Moorthy, but it didn’t sit well with Varma’s family.
“He was very convincing, and it made me uneasy watching him with that moustache. But we could not wait for him to shave it off,” said Iype.
Iype went to watch the first day first show in Kochi with Varma, their daughter Maya, and one of his twin sons Arjun. The audience’s reaction made her realise the impact of his performance.
“We used to escape to Kerala for our family vacations, just relaxing in the houseboats or somewhere else. Now I realise that will never be the same. People recognise him, and the anonymous person is gone,” said Iype.
Varma has no immediate plans to become south India’s next big villain–or hero—for that matter. But Thudarum has reinforced his dream to make a feature film.
“If some interesting project comes up that catches my attention, I will definitely explore that. But for now, it is the advertising commitments and the feature film that have my full attention,” said Varma.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)