Why Vijay-starrer GOAT’s producer Archana Kalpathi refuses to work with Trisha

3 min readHyderabadJun 4, 2026 07:37 PM IST

Producer Archana Kalpathi spoke about her close friendship with actress Trisha Krishnan.

In Tamil cinema, producers and actors working together is the norm. Producers and actors being genuinely close friends outside of it, without a single film between them, is the exception. Archana Kalpathi and Trisha Krishnan are that exception.

Archana, CEO of AGS Entertainment, the production house behind Vijay’s films like Bigil and The Greatest of All Time (GOAT), spoke about her friendship with Trisha in a recent interview with Galatta. What she described was not a professional relationship dressed up as a personal one. It was the other kind entirely, one that started before either of them had set foot in the industry.

“Trisha is my friend outside the industry. I know her not from cinema. We’re from the same batch. It’s that college, school-zone friendship,” she said, adding, “I’ve known her for many years, and that’s why we don’t even work with each other.”

Also Read: How Hero, Doctor and Ayalaan left producer Kotapadi J Rajesh with Rs 120 crore loss

In an industry where relationships almost always translate into professional transactions at some point, Archana Kalpathi and Trisha have kept their friendship in a completely separate compartment. The reason, as Archana explained it, is not distance or disagreement, it is the opposite. The friendship is too important to mix with work. “Trisha is my favourite person. We’re very jolly types. We’re in our own world,” she said.

When Archana shifted from talking about the friendship to talking about the work, the tone changed. She was not speaking as a friend who wanted to say nice things. She was speaking as a producer who watches the industry carefully and knows what the numbers say. “Trisha is the most hardworking person,” Archana said. Then she made her point with a single example. “Look at Karuppu’s success.”

Karuppu, directed by RJ Balaji, was released on May 15. It stars Suriya as a lawyer who is the human avatar of the deity Karuppusamy, and Trisha Krishnan in a key supporting role. The film became Suriya’s highest-grossing film to date and one of the biggest Tamil releases of 2026. Trisha’s performance has been one of the most talked about aspects of the film, drawing particular praise for its emotional range in the second half. But Archana Kalpathi’s argument goes beyond one film. “If you look at every top-grossing movie of every star, she’ll be in that movie,” she said.

Story continues below this ad

Across more than two decades in Tamil and Telugu cinema, Trisha has appeared in blockbusters alongside Vijay, Ajith, Suriya, Kamal Haasan, Mahesh Babu and Prabhas, among others. She has sustained commercial relevance across generations of stars and shifts in audience taste in a way that very few actresses in South Indian cinema have managed.