After the 71st National Film Awards were announced on August 1, the expected followed — a discourse on the wins and the snubs. Fans and social media users were shocked that Prithviraj Sukumaran’s critically acclaimed survival thriller Aadujeevitham, an adaptation of Benyamin’s novel of the same name, was ignored at the coveted awards. Many felt that both Sukumaran as well as director Blessy should have won the Best Actor and Best Director awards, respectively.

With the omission sparking strong backlash, National Awards jury member Pradeep Nair, in an interview, revealed that while the film was in contention, jury chairperson Ashutosh Gowariker and others “felt the adaptation lacked naturality and the performances didn’t feel authentic”.

A week before the announcement of the National Film Awards, when mid-day sat down with Sukumaran to discuss his latest release Sarzameen, we had asked him about the memes on social media that claimed he might be the frontrunner for the big win.

The actor said, “No award is a goalpost in my mind. All that I ever wanted from that film, I’ve already got. My number one [criterion] was that I wanted the film to work. I wanted people to like my performance, and most importantly, I wanted the world to know that man’s story. All three happened. There’s nothing else that I want from the film. If I get a National Award, great; if I don’t, congratulations to whoever gets it.”

In Aadujeevitham, Sukumaran played Najeeb, a Malayali migrant labourer trapped in Saudi Arabia.

Over the last few weeks, reports about Prithviraj Sukumaran returning to Hindi films with a project that will reportedly launch actor Saif Ali Khan’s son, Ibrahim Ali Khan, have been doing the rounds. While the actor, who has done three Hindi films so far — Aiyyaa (2012), Aurangzeb (2013) and Naam Shabana (2017) — doesn’t spill the beans on the movie, he hints that a Bollywood project will soon be underway. “I’ve read four Hindi scripts and I liked them. I may sign one soon,” says the actor, who is known for his Malayalam outings.

Explaining what kept him away from Bollywood for demi-decade, the 40-year-old says, “I didn’t do Hindi films because Malayalam cinema has been fantastic. The kind of work that found its way to me was gratifying.”

He adds that a couple of interesting Hindi film offers did come his way, but his hands were full. “I couldn’t say yes to them because of Aadujeevitham (upcoming Malayalam film). Now that it is done, I can explore other projects,” he says.

Sukumaran, who was last seen in Jana Gana Mana, has also directed films such as Lucifer (2019) and Bro Daddy. Ask him about the obsession with the idea of pan-India films in the recent times and Sukumaran says, “It makes absolute sense to me. It’s an off-shoot of how the cinema business model is structured these days. Any big film is anyway dubbed in at least four languages, as that’s how digital licensing is structured.”

He adds that as a filmmaker, the dubbing of a movie has to be supervised. “So, if you make that much effort, you can also make the effort to release the film in theatres. Every movie might not be a KGF: Chapter 2 or RRR, but at least you can make sure that you give people across India an opportunity to watch a film in a language of their choice, in theatres,” the actor ends.