Vijay Sethupathi insists on dubbing his own Hindi lines in Farzi

One of the many pleasures of watching Raj and DK’s excellent series Farzi on Amazon Prime Video is to see the Tamil maestro of naturalistic acting Vijay Sethupathi speaking in Hindi.

Vijay insisted on speaking his own lines in Hindi. He says he did not want to take the risk of letting someone else dub his lines, as then the performance is bifurcated. “One performance is mine; the other is a voice giving another dimension to the character.”

Vijay was adamant he would not let anyone dub his lines in Hindi. “I made that mistake in my film Telugu film Uppena where I couldn’t dub my lines in Telugu. My command over the language was not good enough. From now onwards I will do my own lines, no matter what the language no matter what it takes.”

Vijay doesn’t give undue importance to the spoken lines. “I believe acting is all about observation. To me the least important part of a performance is the dialogue. I feel words always get in the way of the emotions. That’s why I enjoyed shooting for the Hindi film Gandhi Talks. It has no dialogues, it’s a silent film.”

And not because Vijay can’t speak Hindi. “Jee nahin, meri Hindi kafi achchi ho gayi hai(my Hindi has really improved). I’ve been working on it (the Hindi language) for my other projects with Raj-DK and another Hindi film being directed by Santosh Sivan.”

Says Vijay, “I’ve always believed that for an actor silences always speak louder than words. At least it’s true of me. I always feel the words come in the way of expressing the feelings. I am at my most expressive when I am not speaking.”