Prithviraj on I, Nobody, why he doesn’t do his own stunts: ‘My injury delayed film for 1 year’

Prithviraj Sukumaran has called I, Nobody a film that defies genre classification, revealing that what begins as a bank heist story transforms into social commentary, a kidnap drama and eventually a one-man chase thriller across its nearly three-hour runtime.

In an interaction with SCREEN, the actor also detailed the physically demanding shoot that involved a French stunt coordinator, a real shopping mall in Thiruvananthapuram and a bus that was cut in half for a single fight sequence.

“With I, Nobody, I’ve said this multiple times, this is a film that you cannot really classify in one genre,” Prithviraj said. “Even as you watch the film, I’m sure if you look back at it, you will realise that when the movie started, you would have thought, oh, this is a bank robbery. Then finally, you realise it was not about that. Then it suddenly becomes like a social commentary. Then it becomes like a kidnap drama. Then it sort of becomes like a man against the system. So it keeps switching genres.”

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He described the second half as the point where the film transforms most dramatically. “In the second half, you realise that the film suddenly becomes something else. It’s like a running man kind of thing, and it becomes one man’s fight against a system that then takes on almost the nature of a satire. It’s like an action film, but it just has a satire,” he said.

That constant shifting, Prithviraj explained, was a deliberate choice by director Nissam Basheer. “That is the way the director wants to tell this story. This is a story that has been narrated at a particular pace. It takes its own time to build the world and the character and everything,” he said.

The action in the film, he noted, is not structured the way most mainstream Indian films handle it. Rather than placing set pieces at calculated intervals, the physicality in I, Nobody is woven into the story itself. “It is not even like usual cinema where you sit down and design and you decide, okay, let’s have an action sequence at this part of the first half and then the interval block and pre-climax. Here the action is like one continuous block, almost the entire second half, where the story is that he is facing one hurdle after the other, and each one of those is overcome through actual physical confrontation. So the action is part of the narrative. It was written that way,” Prithviraj said.

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A significant part of the conversation centred on working with Yannick Ben, the French stunt coordinator who brought a style of choreography that Prithviraj said was fundamentally different from what South Indian cinema is used to. “In India, especially South India, we have a language that we like for how we shoot action. There’s a lot of cut shots, high speed, slow motion. That’s how we like seeing action heroes on screen,” he explained. “Yannick Ben comes from a different school of thought. If there’s an action sequence that is, say, five minutes long, Yannick will come and choreograph the entire five minutes almost like a dance performance. Then you rehearse the entire five minutes at normal speed. And what he really tries to do is try and not cut as much as possible. So if you see it, it’s all long, single shots. Obviously, it’s much more difficult to pull off, but if you pull it off, it becomes very real and raw.”

The actor also spoke about the practical challenges of shooting the film’s most talked-about action sequences. One of the major set pieces was filmed inside a functioning shopping mall in Thiruvananthapuram. “The shopping mall action block you see in the film was actually one of the busiest shopping malls in the city. So we went and spoke to the shop owners and they were actually happy to help. They shut down the mall for us. But we asked them, can some of your shops stay open? Because it should look like the mall is running. So they stayed open with no business for us for three or four days while we shot the action block there. All the running scenes are not a set,” Prithviraj revealed.

The bus fight sequence, another highlight, required a different kind of problem-solving. “The bus fight was something very new because of how it was shot. We bought a bus, cut it into half, made sure it could travel in all 360 degrees, and then the rest of the bus was later generated in CGI. It’s a complicated process, but it’s fun,” he said.

But the fun comes with real risk, something Prithviraj knows from personal experience. He opened up about a serious accident in 2023 that changed his approach to stunts. “In 2023, I was shooting for another film, and I have a reputation for doing action all by myself. I was doing a stunt sequence and I had an accident and I had a very complex injury on my left knee. I had to do three surgeries, and now I have three titanium screws in my left leg. That film had to be stalled for one year. So much money was lost, so many people had to just wait for one year. So now I carry that responsibility in my head,” he said.

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That awareness was tested during the making of I, Nobody itself. “One of our fighters was injured on set, and he ended up getting 37 stitches behind his neck. These things happen. That’s why I’m saying, imagine if I was doing that shot and it happened to me. I would be going home for six months,” Prithviraj said, making clear that the physical toll of the kind of action Yannick Ben designs is not something to be taken lightly.

Despite all of it, his enthusiasm for the craft remained evident. “I really like shooting action. I became a filmmaker through actually shooting action sequences,” he said. The challenge with I, Nobody, he suggested, was that Yannick’s method demanded far more from the actor than the conventional approach. “It’s a lot of physical work for the actor, but the good thing is Yannick’s fighters are also so good. And if you pull it off, it becomes very real and raw.”

I, Nobody, directed by Nissam Basheer and written by Sameer Abdul, released in theatres on July 9. The film also stars Parvathy Thiruvothu, Hakkim Shahjahan, Ashokan and Vijayaraghavan.