CINEMA & BEYOND | IN CONVERSATION

Krisha Kurup, Between Takes and Tangents

A few minutes before our conversation formally began, actor Krisha Kurup was already making a passionate case for Kochi. Everyone should visit the city at least once, she insisted, with the easy conviction of a friend determined to add another destination to your travel plans.

It was an introduction to Krisha, whose career has moved through Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu cinema, and to the way she experiences places: not as backdrops, but as living cultures.

That instinct began in Chembur, Mumbai, where she grew up in a Malayali family amid neighbours from several communities.

“On the corridor of the flat where I lived, I had a Sindhi neighbour, a Maharashtrian family, someone from Goa and someone from Kashmir,” she says. “There was so much diversity on one floor alone, let alone the entire city.”

Malayalam was not central to her childhood. Mumbai, with its overlapping languages and communities, shaped her more immediately. That eye for difference stayed with her as she moved across industries, from Tamil films such as Azhagu Kutti Chellam, Goli Soda 2 and Jothi to Malayalam and Telugu projects including B 32 Muthal 44 Vare, Ronth, Clap and Kuberaa.

But long before multilingual cinema, Krisha was learning how much emotion could be carried without a face.

Finding a Voice

Her first creative experience arrived at 13, when she dubbed for a children’s cartoon. The characters were parrots, animated birds whose happiness, sadness and fear had to be communicated entirely through sound.

“To be the voice of a cartoon was a sense of achievement,” she recalls. Even a scream had to remain gentle enough for young viewers. Looking back, she recognises the timing, modulation and emotional control involved. At the time, however, she had no idea she would become an actor.

“It was rather surrendering to what was asked to be done and having fun,” she says.

Years later, surrender and observation became essential to how she entered characters in cultures outside her own.

Learning by Speaking

When Krisha began working in Tamil films, she realised that the Tamil she had heard in Mumbai was different from the language and social rhythm of Chennai. She learnt on set through dialogue, mistakes and corrections.

“I still remember a lighting crew member telling me, ‘Keep talking. You will learn the language better. If you remain quiet, you will never understand it,’” she says.

Tamil came through conversations with crew members. Telugu followed while she worked in that industry. Returning to Malayalam cinema required another adjustment because native Malayalam carried a different tone from the language she had encountered while growing up.

For Krisha, language is never just dialogue. It determines how a character stands, pauses and occupies space.

“The way I have seen people in Chennai speak, the whole body participates,” she says. “When they give directions, the hand may extend fully from the shoulder, the eyes move in that direction and sometimes the body turns too.”

Krisha describes herself as comparatively restrained. The challenge is to bring that physicality into a Chennai character without making it feel performed.

The Work Beneath the Script

Her preparation begins with understanding how a woman from a particular place behaves, what provokes her and what rebellion means within her world.

The girls she played in Azhagu Kutti Chellam and Goli Soda 2 were far removed from Krisha’s own upbringing. Understanding them meant looking beyond the dialogue.

“I take that effort to understand what’s not written in the script,” she says.

For Nila in Azhagu Kutti Chellam, she trained in speed chess. She had to handle the pieces without fumbling and make every movement look instinctive. She also avoids treating another actor’s performance as a template.

“You cannot recreate somebody else’s work,” she says. The goal is to study people themselves and represent them truthfully.

Same Scene, Different Language

That attention shaped her bilingual performance in Clap. Filming scenes in Tamil and Telugu taught her that translation alone was insufficient.

“You have to adapt to the natural flow and musicality of the language,” she explains. “The pauses change, the emphasis changes, and even the point in a sentence that affects the audience may be different.”

Switching languages changed her eye contact, stance and internal rhythm. The actors opposite her also changed between versions, altering her responses even when the scene and emotion remained the same.

In the film, she played Bhagyalakshmi and Durga, two identities within one woman’s journey. Bhagyalakshmi had been distanced from the athlete she once was; Durga marked a return to determination.

The training taught Krisha that athletes often conserve their physical energy. The difference between the two versions therefore emerged through subtleties: fewer blinks, a steadier gaze and greater confidence in the eyes.

Her Bharatanatyam training helped. A dancer may wear the same costume while moving between several characters and emotional worlds. The transformation happens internally, with little external assistance.

Playing Without a Moral Compass

If Bhagyalakshmi and Durga had recognisable emotional frameworks, AI Radhika in Aindham Vedham presented the opposite challenge.

Krisha played both the human Radhika and an artificial version of her. The distinction came through restraint rather than exaggeration. The human character responded through emotion and spontaneity; AI Radhika was measured, precise and controlled.

The difficulty was that the avatar had no empathy, remorse or moral framework. Her dialogue was simply a response to a situation, unburdened by Krisha’s own judgement.

“Your rights and wrongs shouldn’t reflect in your emotions,” she explains.

Even the avatar’s appearance resisted conventional logic, moving through changing hair colours and unexpected costumes. “She can be anything she wants to be,” Krisha says.

Scale Changes, the Work Does Not

A production like Kuberaa, with Sekhar Kammula, Dhanush, Nagarjuna and Rashmika Mandanna, brought a different scale—but Krisha is unsentimental about what scale actually changes.

A larger budget may offer more time, additional assistants or greater comfort. A smaller production may need to complete several scenes quickly.

“But largely, your work remains the same,” she says. “The director remains the director, the DOP remains the DOP. They all expect only one thing from an actor: to perform.”

Production value changes; the responsibility to be truthful does not.

Women Without Halos

Although Telugu audiences have seen Krisha through bilingual films, dubbed releases and a pan-Indian project, she does not believe they have encountered her full range. She wants to work directly in Telugu across dramas, romances, thrillers and negative roles.

None of her characters, she says, has closely resembled her. That distance keeps her curiosity alive.

What she wants most now are women who cannot be sorted neatly into strength or weakness, hero or villain.

“I really want to see women play grey shades,” she says. “Someone who isn’t perfect, but simply human—who makes difficult choices, carries contradictions, vulnerabilities and flaws.”

She questions cinema’s narrow definition of the “strong woman”. Strength need not arrive through aggression or a dramatic rebellion. It can look like her mother, whom Krisha describes as strong because she quietly holds her ground.

Women may be practical, selfish, sacrificial or politically wrong. Krisha wants them to have the same moral complexity routinely granted to men.

Films including Queen, That Girl in Yellow Boots, Waiting, 7 Khoon Maaf, The Great Indian Kitchen and Trance remain with her for the different ways they allowed women to exist.

Between Takes

Away from cinema, Krisha writes, although she calls herself an insecure writer. The work remains private.

“I do articulate things well. I’m aware of it,” she says. “But when it comes to sharing my writing, I’m really shy.”

She is also a mandala artist. Her drawings have accumulated across wardrobes and tables because she cannot stop making them. On a quiet set, a black pen and plain paper are enough to occupy her. Yoga keeps her grounded, while Bharatanatyam remains an art form she would love to represent truthfully on screen.

The Broken Itinerary

Krisha calls herself a slow, food-led and nature-led traveller: organised until she arrives, then willing to abandon the plan.

Hotels and logistics are booked partly to reassure her family. Once she reaches the destination, certainty loses its appeal.

“If somebody tells me, ‘Hop onto this bus, you will see heaven,’ I will,” she says.

An itinerary, no matter how carefully researched, is built from somebody else’s experience. To make a journey personal, she believes, you must eventually break it.

Italy has remained on her list for years. She is drawn to its architecture, medieval character, coastline and food, but it is the less familiar towns and landscapes she most wants to discover.

Perhaps that is Krisha’s way of approaching travel and performance: study the route closely, then leave enough room for a place—or a character—to lead somewhere unexpected.