Actress Divya Prabha whose film 'All We Imagine As Light' won the Grand Prix at Cannes. (Photo: Stephanie Cornfield)
What are the odds that someone goes for a morning jog and ends up being cast in a film? It happened with Malayalam actor Divya Prabha, who plays one of the leads, as the younger nurse Anu, in Payal Kapadia’s debut feature All We Imagine as Light, which has just won the Grand Prix award, the second-highest award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, and the first Indian film to win the award.
Divya Prabha (second from right, in pink saree) with director Payal Kapadia, Chhaya Kadam and Kani Kusruti in Cannes receiving the Grand Prix award for their film.
It was a Malayalam film 30 years ago, Shaji N Karun’s Swaham (1994), that was the last time India was in the main Competition, vying for the Palme d’Or, and after all these years, not only did Payal Kapadia’s majorly Malayalam-language film broke that jinx for India, she went on to win the Grand Prix, becoming the first Indian ever to win the second-highest award at the prestigious film festival. How does the Malayalee actress feel about it? “I felt really grateful and got overwhelmed, because it is a once-in-a-lifetime moment for all of us. Thirty years is a long time, and this film is going to be part of history and I never ever imagined myself walking on the Cannes red carpet. It’s huge,” says Kochi-based Divya Prabha, 32, who not only looked stunning on the red carpet in a bold copper gown, designed by actress Poornima Indrajith’s label Pranaah, she along with her co-stars danced away in what has become a night to remember.
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It might be some kind of foreshadowing that the two roles that gave her wide recognition among audiences, at home and the world, were of a nurse, since her mother was a nurse before marriage. Divya played Jincy, in a supporting role, in the Parvathy-starrer Take Off (2017), which presented the real Kerala story, and in Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light. “Yes, both are nurses but they are totally different in characters. I can’t find any similarities in them, between Jincy in Take Off and Anu in All We Imagine As Light, even if they are in the same profession. Their age, surrounding, experiences, the background, everything is entirely different,” says the actor who’s having a moment in the sun.
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Divya Prabha, who grew up across Kerala but spent a major part of her childhood in the state’s cultural capital Thrissur, was, perhaps, destined to become an actor. She recalls her “first connection to cinema”. She was 10 years old when her late father took her, and not her elder sisters Vidya Prabha and Sandhya Prabha to Mumbai, on being invited by his friend director Priyanandanan for the shoot of his first film the Murali-starrer Neythukaran (2002). “My achchan (father), who passed away during COVID, worked as a legal consultant. In Mumbai, he first took me to Dharavi and the slums in the city, took me on the local trains, and made sure his children had a sense of the real world,” says Divya, who participated proactively in dance, song, drama, recitation, sports in school and at home, she grew up in an “encouraging environment”, unlike many other girls who faced “social restrictions” back in the day. She admits to watching a lot of Malayalam classics on TV, and counts Urvashi, KPAC Lalitha and Manju Warrier at that time as some of her favourite homegrown actresses.
After her graduation, Divya moved to Kochi, working in an education consultancy as a counsellor and was parallelly pursuing MBA. During a morning walk one day, she saw a film shoot was taking place and stopped among the crowd to get a closer look. The next moment, she says, “a guy came to me and asked me to sit for the next scene. I immediately said yes because I thought I can watch the film shooting more closely but I was asked to do a tiny role. The film was (the Mohanlal-starrer) Lokpal (2013), directed by Joshiy. It’s just a small role without any dialogues. I was in the frame for three-four scenes only. And suddenly, I became a film actress. I called my mom and took leave from office. That was the day it all started.”
Films offers poured in but mostly for smaller roles. “Ithihasa (2014, directed by Binu Sadanandan) is the first film in which I played a proper character role.” And, quite peculiarly, she got television offers after she did films, not the other way around. Most famously, she became a household name with the very popular television serial directed by KK Rajeev, Eshwaran Sakshiyayi. Her All We Imagine As Light co-star Kani Kusruti also acted in that serial. “The 140-episode Eshwaran Sakshiyayi was one of the most appreciated serials of that time and I got the state award for the second-best actress for the same. But I didn’t feel like continuing television after that, although the state award boosted the confidence of the actor in me. I started giving auditions and landed a role in Mahesh Narayanan’s Take Off (2017). I’ve learnt a lot from Mahesh’s film. The whole process was very satisfying. I started taking acting very seriously after that,” she adds.
Take Off was a turning point, she admits. “Most audiences still identify me as Take Off actress Jincy. That was the first time I got loads of appreciation within the industry. The film happened right after the serial, so it was a little difficult for me to unlearn certain things and do the role. But, yes, that marked my career as an actress.”
But it wouldn’t be until Ariyippu/The Declaration (2022), which was shot during the pandemic and released on Netflix, that the rest of India will sit up and take note of her.
“Ariyippu was my third film with Mahesh Narayanan, after Take Off and Malik (2021). After Malik, he came to me and narrated the synopsis of Ariyippu. From the initial conversation itself, I understood the intensity of Reshmi’s character. Since it was my first protagonist role, I got scared a little in the beginning, but Mahesh is a wonderful filmmaker. He gave the whole script a few months before the shoot and given a space to discuss about the role, that helped me a lot to understand the emotional graph. I have a habit of observing people a lot, that helps me as an actor. As I read the script a few times, Reshmi the character slowly started growing on me. How the character looks, the way she speaks in the (glove-making) factory, her equation with her husband, the silences, her helplessness. My process is happening within me. The factory (in Noida in Delhi NCR) and all of that was very new to me, Mahesh and Konchacko (Boban), we went to the glove-making factory, we observed everything there, I learnt Reshmi’s profession. After the world premiere in Locarno, it got lot of appreciation even before it released on Netflix. It was a major turning point for me. It was overwhelming,” says Divya about her pan-Indian success.
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Then came another role, in Don Palathara’s Vinay Fortt-starrer Malayalam film Family (2023), which premiered at the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). In both Ariyippu and Family, Divya’s characters Reshmi and Rani, respectively, are a witness to truth but are not believed by the society. Both are about a certain kind of systemic silencing of women, who are victims and witnesses. “In Don Palathara’s film, that role came to me just one week before the shoot, because the actor who was supposed to do the role suddenly backed out. I wanted to work with him, I had seen a couple of Don’s movies and I really liked his work, especially 1956, Central Travancore (2019) and Santhoshathinte Onnam Rahasyam (Joyful Mystery, 2021). These two are my favourite films of his. I didn’t get much time to prepare for the role of Rani, to make her convincing, but he gave the character description so precisely I just followed that. In both these films, system plays a major role. I found both these women (Reshmi and Rani) are helpless and at the same time courageous, too.”
In All We Imagine As Light, set in Mumbai, nurse Prabha’s (Kani Kusruti) routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha), tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest. In this film, made by a woman, helmed by women, there is a space available to these women, who are victim of their circ*mstances in a way, to find release, liberation, fulfilment and a bond of trust, unavailable to them in many women characters written by men. So, was it any different being directed by a woman director? “I don’t think the gender makes any differences creatively. True, this is the first time I am working with a female director and I felt it’s very comfortable. There were a lot of women on the set, which was energising,” she says.
All We Imagine as Light is a bilingual film, it has Malayalam and Hindi, with some spattering of Marathi. “Most of the characters speak Malayalam in this film because the entire movie is about Malayali nurses who are working in Mumbai but there are few Hindi dialogues, same as Ariyippu, so I managed,” says Divya, adding about the difference between acting in a Mumbai film from Malayalam films, “I really like the working culture of Mumbai but creatively it’s all the same, particularly in Payal’s film, there was so much energy. May be, in future, if I work more in Mumbai, I will be able to compare better.”
Divya says there were a lot of funny things that happened while shooting Payal’s film, shot in Mumbai and Ratnagiri, but remains tight-lipped because all of it is connected to her scenes from the film and she doesn’t want to give any spoilers to the Indian audiences just yet.
Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha in a still from All We Imagine As Light.
Her co-stars Kani Kusruti (Poacher, Killer Soup) and Chhaya Kadam (Manju Mai of Laapataa Ladies; Madgaon Express) are more popular faces, having done both Mumbai and regional films/web-series, how did the lesser known Divya land a role in Payal Kapadia’s film? “I got a call from Pranav, who’s the EP of Payal’s film, he sent me the script and asked for the audition.” She gave the first round of audition in Kochi for Prabha’s character, later she was called for another audition in Mumbai. “Payal directly came to the railway station to pick me up and I stayed in Payal’s house for a couple of days.” Right after the second round of audition for Prabha’s role, Payal asked her to do the role of the younger nurse, Anu. It took her a while to mentally switch from Prabha to Anu.
“It was a very long process, almost four-five rounds of audition, then I got Anu’s role. When I first read the script, I was attracted to Anu’s role at first. Maybe I felt Prabha has some traits of Reshmi, it’s my personal perspective, I never played a role like Anu before. To be frank, I had to gain some courage to do this role. I can’t talk more about the role right now but I am very grateful to Payal for recognising the performer in me, the trust she has in me. As an actor, we rarely get chances to play the younger characters. Anu is very spontaneous, impulsive and speaks her mind always, sometimes she’s immature. I found it very interesting. I can relate somewhere Anu to my younger self, but at the same time, I’m not that much impulsive like her, she’s very immature which I am not. When comparing Anu with the other characters I’ve done before, this character stands out,” she adds.
Apart from my prep and process, Divya credits Payal for “bringing out the best in her actors,” she says, “For the first time, I got so much workshops and rehearsals for the character. And she’s always open for suggestions and views. She’s welcoming and ready to discuss about our perspectives, it helped a lot. She’s a brilliant writer, director and a wonderful human being.”
Actor Hridhu Haroon in Cannes. (Photo: Stephanie Cornfield)
Young Tamil actor Hridhu Haroon (Thugs, Mumbaikar) plays Anu’s boyfriend Shiaz in the film. “Hridhu is way younger than me, there was a certain ease working with him, and our chemistry worked well for the film, I think,” she says.
Divya Prabha and Hridhu Haroon in a still from All We Imagine As Light.
And about her dynamic female co-stars Kani Kusruti and Chhaya Kadam, Divya has only praises to shower, “There is lot to learn from our co-actors always. I observe my co-actors. I love Chhaya Kadam’s energy. I love dancing with her, playing with her, she is so lovely. I’ve worked with Kani before in a serial and a play, this is the first time we are in a film together. We have known each other for a very long time. That chemistry was polished by the workshops and shows in the film. The actor Loveleen Mishra, she was there in Ariyippu, and I have got the opportunity to work with her in this film, too. She is amazing.”
As for getting to play the romantic leads in Malayalam films and not play supporting roles, say, for instance, Fahadh Faasil’s sister in Malik, Divya says, “I always wanted to do all kinds of roles, if there is a space to perform even if it is small or big, I’ll do it. I also enjoy watching movies in all genres, so I don’t limit myself.”
Divya Prabha in a still from All We Imagine As Light.
She also played the sister of Dileep in the film Kammara Sambhavam (2018). In 2017, the high-profile sexual harassment case involving Dileep rocked the predominantly male Malayalam film industry, opening conversations around #MeToo in the film industry. Dileep was first removed from Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) but, later, when he was reinstated into the Mohanlal-headed association, Divya Prabha along with other Women in Cinema Collective members protested against it. “This is a male dominated world. In every sector we can see patriarchy. We all are aware of that. So, it is there in entertainment business as well. But I think things are changing. Now, I am looking at the brighter side. After 30 years, an Indian film competed in Cannes which is a women-led film and it won the Grand Prix. That should be celebrated,” says Divya Prabha, who has two interesting projects coming up, the shoot for which are over. One is directed by Jeo Baby, in which, she says, “I am playing the lead role.”
