Sobhita Dhulipala talks about Dev Patel and his portrayal of 'Monkey Man'

“I actually thought being called “niche” was a compliment. Monkey man Star Sobhita Dhulipala tells Deadline.

It's nighttime in India when we meet the star, and we discuss a recent profile that calls her a “niche Indian actress.”

“In India, there is the conventional idea of ​​a mainstream commercial film star where they like you because you entertain them and allow them to escape, but you are not really responsible as an actor for to defend anything,” she explains. “I guess my expectations of a different type of actor who makes films that touch me and travel with me would be sort of more personal, and that's a bit of a niche.”

Dhulipala's choice of roles reflects this mentality. Born in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, she followed a career that takes one from beauty pageants to acting, a path taken by Priyanka Chopra, Aishwarya Rai and many others. She left a degree in corporate law to represent India at Miss Earth 2013, and later made her acting debut in acclaimed director Anurag Kashyap's psychological crime thriller. Raman Raghav 2.0.

“I feel like I've been seen as someone more 'alternative,' for lack of a better word,” Dhulipala says, using air quotes in the “alternative” world.

Although she appeared in several Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil films, her best-known role before Monkey man was probably the wedding planner Tara Khanna in the Prime videos Made in Heaven. The vengeful, sometimes conniving and selfish character is not particularly likeable, but over the course of three seasons, he becomes a character to root for.

'Monkey Man'

Even before these roles appeared, Dhulipala had auditioned to be Sita in Monkey mana first directorial adventure for Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel. After a lengthy audition process, she got the role in 2019 and the project was filmed during the lockdown on an island in Indonesia. Co-produced by Jordan Peele, the film took another four years to release worldwide.

A neo-noir action thriller starring Patel, which has so far grossed over $30 million at the worldwide box office, Universal's Monkey man follows protagonist Kid, whose community is attacked when he is a child. Inspired by tales of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, he sets out to protect the disadvantaged and seek revenge. Dhulipala plays a relatively small but crucial role as an exploited prostitute in the brothel where Kid ultimately works. Patel has previously said that Dhulipala, apart from being “breathtakingly beautiful”, “also handles pain well as a performer”.

Dhulipala waxes lyrical when asked if Monkey man changed his life. “Would it come out at all?” Or? Who would publish it? I didn't imagine it would one day be born in such a beautiful way,” she says. “I can go to the Chinese theater and SXSW with my film, it's like the [John Lennon] song, right? Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

The global attention is somewhat new for Dhulipala, who describes himself as an introvert and comfortable person “living under a rock because it's humid and comfortable.” “A lot of times my response to social life is to kind of withdraw, so when I have to talk about myself or my journey, I'm just like, 'Um, so I've been alive, and uh, I' I got typhoid last year, 'I don't know'.” she laughs. “Do I have anything special to add?” »

In an era where streaming has brought more and more national actors into the Hollywood spotlight, Dhulipala's journey has been slightly different from that of her predecessors like Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone. For one, she has worked in several Indian film industries, not just Bollywood. She recalls a roundtable discussion with her co-stars from the Hindi adaptations of The night manager. The moderator had asked a question subtly alluding to the fact that she was South Indian but worked in the North Indian Bollywood industry. “I think the host was just being cheeky, but I don’t know – when I go to another country, I’m Indian. When I am in India, I come from South India. In South India, I don't speak Malayalam or Tamil, I speak Telugu. But then again, I am not from Telangana, I am from Andhra Pradesh,” she says, zooming in on the regional specifics.

“Where can I be human?” Maybe in a laboratory,” she adds.

Dhulipala's frustrations are very similar to those previously expressed by his co-star Patel, who was born in the UK to Indian parents who were themselves born in Kenya. In a 2021 interview with the Guardian about typecasting and representation, Patel said: “Where am I allowed to exist? How specific are we going to be with this? What does it mean to be an actor – to simply be yourself? Am I allowed to only play a 31 year old guy? Will you check my blood type?

Dhulipala also denounces stereotypes. “When people say 'India,' they usually think 'tandoori' and 'balle ball,'” she says, referring to the lively songs and dances of the Punjab region. “But there's such a beautiful cultural density, so if someone asks me about India, I'll just say, 'Do you have 15 minutes?' Because yes, it's a lot, here is the complete description of Chat GPT.

Although she is a self-confessed introvert, the fact that she has worked in several film industries made the transition to Hollywood easier. This came in handy on the set of Monkey man, which has seen more than its fair share of chaos. Patel shared in a Reddit post that filming during Covid-19 was an “absolute disaster” every day, with breaks, bubbles and closed borders becoming the norm on set. “I think they were doing five days of work in one day, every day,” Dhulipala recalls. “And we were eating the same food for months.”

“We didn’t even know if anyone would want to buy it, so it was a crazy, beautiful energy that was just focused on getting it done.”

Although set in an Indian context, Dev Patel's passionate directorial work is yet to see a release in the country, as industry eyebrows are raised over a number of other delayed releases of Bollywood. Many have speculated that this is because the film criticizes the nationalist sentiment espoused by the current government, but Dhulipala is coy. “It’s very perspective-driven, isn’t it?” she says. “I might be put off by something that's completely normal for you and you think I'm overreacting and vice versa.”

She adds: “I feel like it depends a lot on a person's personal belief system and judgment, and who that person is, who the people are, and who is evaluating the liberation. It's on them, I'm just a small fry.

This feeling, summed up so well by Dhulipala, seems to be part and parcel of being a niche player.