'Daayra': This National Award winner is dubbing for Kareena
What's the story
Parvathy Thiruvothu, the acclaimed actor, has lent her voice to Kareena Kapoor Khan's character in the Malayalam version of Daayra. In an interview with Variety India, she revealed that the dubbing process was more about honoring the original performance than mimicking it. "The idea is to be true to the actor's performance," she said.
Dubbing challenges
Thiruvothu acknowledged the challenges of dubbing for Kapoor Khan
Thiruvothu, who won a National Film Award for Take Off (Special Mention), acknowledged the difficulty of dubbing for Kapoor Khan, given her unique voice and screen presence.
"Kareena has an extremely distinct and recognizable voice and screen presence," she said.
"But without even trying, some of the English dialogues that I delivered were eerily similar to Kareena's voice."
"I tried to mirror the decibels and intonations and then let everything else just fall into place."
Technical hurdles
She also opened up about the technical challenges of dubbing
Thiruvothu spoke about the technical challenges of dubbing, such as getting the emotion and rhythm right while ensuring that the Malayalam dialogue sounded natural.
"The biggest challenge in all of that was controlling the mouth and the lip sync to make sure the other language doesn't look too jarring," she explained.
Director's insight
Thiruvothu had a detailed conversation with Meghna Gulzar
While she didn't speak to Kapoor Khan directly about the dubbing, Thiruvothu had a detailed conversation with director Meghna Gulzar.
"I spoke to Meghna at length about the movie and the character," she shared. "She gave me a very nice introduction to why she made the movie the way she did."
Performance challenge
'That one crack in the voice was the most difficult'
Thiruvothu also spoke about a particularly challenging scene in Daayra.
"There is a scene where Ajooni is listening to a person recount an incident," she recalled. "While doing so, she has to say a line that suggests that this is the end of questioning and her voice cracks in the most delicious way."
"That one crack in the voice was the most difficult. I did not achieve it to the extent that Kareena has done it."