Jessie, Jaanu, Kundavai: Trisha over the years

Her rival, Nayanthara, is reportedly the highest paid woman actor in the southern industries. For a while, fans would fight online over which star had the upper hand. Both of them had made their Tamil debut as the lead around the same time (Trisha with Mounam Pesiyadhe in 2002 and Nayanthara with Ayya in 2005) and had notched up several blockbusters with male stars such as Vijay, Ajith, Vikram and Suriya. Few female actors before them had achieved such longevity, and they were both starting to do films in which they were the solo lead. Eventually, Nayanthara laid claim to the title of ‘Lady Superstar’ while Trisha became known as ‘South Queen’.

But beyond these labels, number of releases and their performance at the box-office, Trisha has a special place in the hearts of the audience. Speaking about working with Trisha in her Malayalam debut film Hey Jude (2018), Nivin Pauly said that he’d become a huge fan of the actor after watching her in Gautham Vasudev Menon’s Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya (2010). “Every youngster in Tamil Nadu and Kerala fell in love with Trisha. We loved Jessie, the character she played,” said Pauly.

In Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya, Trisha plays a Malayali woman who is torn between her impulse to follow her heart and the need to listen to her family. Jessie’s ‘complicated’ relationship with Karthik (Silambarasan) struck a chord with young people back then and the film went on to become a blockbuster. Trisha’s maroon and green saree from the film acquired its own fandom and is still known as the ‘VTV saree’.

By the early 2000s, the role of the heroine had begun to shrink in Tamil cinema. They were more or less restricted to playing the cutesy “love interest” in heavily male-centric narratives, appearing in songs and a few romance scenes. Trisha’s early films were no different. She had a pleasing screen presence, could dance and emote well but these roles weren’t what critics would call substantial. The Hindu’s review of Saami, Trisha’s blockbuster film with Vikram in 2003, said, “Notwithstanding the provocative movements in the duets Trisha looks dignified, though a trifle young for the hero.”

Her 2004 film Ghilli with Vijay seemingly revolved around her character, Dhanalakshmi. A gangster named Muthupandi (Prakash Raj) becomes obsessed with her and it falls upon the hero, Velu (Vijay), to save the damsel in distress. However, Trisha had little to do in the film as a pawn between two men, but she made her mark in the energetic ‘Appadi Podu’ song, keeping in step with Vijay.

That same year, she had a major hit with Prabhas in Telugu. The romantic action film Varsham also fetched Trisha her first Filmfare award for Best Actress. Her multi-starrer with Mani Ratnam, Aayutha Ezhuthu, in which she plays a modern young woman who is forced by her family to get married, released in 2004 as well.

Trisha went on to do several commercial entertainers in Tamil and Telugu, becoming an in-demand heroine in both markets. In 2008 came Abhiyum Naanum – this Radha Mohan directorial was also about a man-woman relationship, except that it was about a father (Prakash Raj) and daughter (Trisha). As Abhi, Trisha was quietly assertive as she brought out the frustrations of dealing with a helicopter parent. Trisha proved that she could do more than sing, dance and romance – it’s just that Kollywood hadn’t pushed her enough to do it.

Apart from Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya, Trisha had another interesting release in 2010. In Manmadan Ambu, she played an actor who decides to call off her wedding with her forever-suspicious boyfriend. This was also her first film with veteran actor Kamal Haasan, and Trisha held her own on screen. She also made her debut in Hindi that year with Priyadarshan’s Khatta Meetha but the film tanked at the box-office.

In 2016, she played the villain in the Dhanush political thriller Kodi. It was a film clearly out of her comfort zone, and Trisha struggled with playing the manipulative Rudra – not so much with the expressions, but with the dialogue delivery in the fiery speeches her character had to give. Though she had been in the industry for several years by then, she continued to speak Tamil in a halting fashion and used a voice artist for dubbing (in a recent interview during Ponniyin Selvan-1 promos, she admitted that her linguistic skills were limited). Still, it was a film that showed that the actor was looking to evolve.

Trisha’s enduring charm has perhaps never been better captured than in Prem Kumar’s 96 (2018). The film is about high school sweethearts who are separated by circumstances and meet after 22 years at a school reunion. Dressed in a yellow kurta and blue denim pants with a dupatta casually flung around her neck, Trisha sealed her place as Kollywood’s sweetheart forever by playing the unassuming Jaanu. The film, also starring Vijay Sethupathi, has one of the best introduction sequences for a heroine. We’re all familiar with the hero’s “entry” – there is a major build-up as to who he is and what he’s capable of, the camera then shows us his various body parts before resting on his face. The background score underlines his “mass” appeal. But in 96, it is Trisha’s arrival that gets such importance on screen.

The film moved the audience so much that many people organised school reunions to catch up with old friends after decades. Just like the ‘VTV saree’, the Jaanu kurta also became a fashion trend among women.

2018 also saw the release of Hey Jude, Trisha’s first and only Malayalam release. She plays Crystal, a young woman with bipolar disorder, who manages a shack in Goa. She runs into Nivin Pauly’s Jude who has autism spectrum disorder, and a friendship blooms between the two. This is a sweet, delicate film about two people understanding each other and making the world a little better – and Trisha showed how much she had learnt and grown as an actor over the years.

Despite the many hits and wonderful performances she’s given though, Trisha has made some bewildering choices in recent years like the horror films Nayaki (2016) and Mohini (2018), and the forgettable thriller Paramapadham Vilayattu (2021). Her role in Karthik Subbaraj’s Rajinikanth film Petta (2019) was nothing to write home about either. The actor did well to walk out of projects like Saamy Square (2018) – the sequel to her 2003 hit film with Vikram required her character to die and be replaced by another heroine – but seemed to be struggling to find good scripts.

People were beginning to write her off when Trisha made a spectacular comeback with Ponniyin Selvan-1. Suddenly, the ageist and sexist comments that were made about her on social media (she’s 38 and single – oh the horror!) turned overwhelmingly positive. Her sense of style was applauded at every promo event she attended, and her performance as Kundavai won her praise from critics and audiences alike. Graceful, subtle and manipulative, Trisha’s act as Kundavai was just what the script demanded from her.

Rumour has it that the actor has been roped in for Lokesh Kanagaraj’s next film with Vijay. Whether the news is true or not, it has certainly made fans happy. Their Jessie-Jaanu isn’t disappearing anywhere, anytime soon.