The season two of “Breathe” made headlines not only for the digital debut of Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan, intense acting of Amit Sadh as fierce cop Kabir Sawant but also showed the effortless acting of female lead Nithya Menen as a young mother. Her calm demeanor and hard hitting dialogues as someone whose young daughter was kidnapped in the series, made many women connect with her agony.
In an interview with Opoyi, the 32-year-old states how she craves for a good story and “Breathe” was definitely one such project.
“I have been quite happy with the response,” said Nithya when asked if she ever felt that her male leads got more applause for the show compared to her.
“I think a story should be given more importance than your personal preference of how much you should be given importance. I have never seen the job that way and I have never craved for importance. I crave for a good story to be told and this is the kind of story which gave the right kind of importance to every character that is there in the show. That one thing about ‘Breathe’ I am really fond of is that it is not circling around anybody. Every single character gets what it deserves.”
And that’s why she calls it her career best role.
“I think while shooting itself, I was quite happy with it and I was really happy with my performance. How much I could actually perform and how much space I was given, I just gave my best. People are loving it and I think I always thought it was my best performance that I have given so far so I am really happy with it,” said Nithya who has also appeared in Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu films.
She made her acting debut as a child artist in the 1998 English film “The Monkey Who Knew Too Much” and later made her debut in leading roles in Malayalam with “Akasha Gopuram” released in the year 2008. In 2019, she made her Bollywood debut with Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan starrer “Mission Mangal”
So is she happy with the way her career has shaped up so far?
“Whether in the south or anywhere else, I have never thought about shaping my career or doing anything like that. I just do good scripts that come my way and I just want to do a good body of work. I definitely have a certain kind of cinema that I would like to be part of and surely ‘Breathe’ is a step closer I think to that,” she said .
She feels that cinema is very diverse.
“So there is no specific story line or something like that that you can specify but I think I want to see a certain kind of sensibility , certain kind of maturity behind the making, good writing and these kinds of things immediately appeal to me for sure.”
And probably this is the reason she was never hesitant to play a mother’s role at such a young age.
“It’s not something I think about. I hear something and I feel connected to a particular character than I do it. It doesn’t matter to me if the character is of mother or no mother. I quite enjoy children a lot and I have a very natural sort of instinctive nourishing personality so I can play the role of mother with ease,” said Nithya adding that she has several other projects “that are lined up to be finished” once the shooting resumes.
And this is how Nithya Menen replied to our rapid fire questions:
What is c-16? (the mystery that remained unanswered in ‘Breathe’ season two)
You really think I will answer that obviously the entire season depends on that (and she laughs)
Define Nithya Menen
I don’t think I define myself at all. I don’t think you should define yourself. I think life is like a flow and lot of change needs to happen to you. If you confine yourself than you will never transform or change
Attribute about your personality that you love
That I can change and grow
What makes you happy
Babies
Southern films or Bollywood
Everything all films and I am sure I have effective agent who can manage both together
