Why did Katappa kill Baahubali, this is one question that took the nation by storm after the release of ‘Baahubali: The Beginning’ in 2015. It immortalised the characters and the actor who played Katappa, Sathyaraj, along with it. Speaking in a recent interview, the actor said his life can be divided into before and after the movie.
He said, “For me, life can be divided into life before and after Baahubali. Before this film, people only knew me in the south, or wherever Tamilians lived in the world. After this character happened, everybody knows me.” The 67-year-old says the one question he gets asked often is, “How tough was it to keep the answer to the question a secret until the film was released?” Sathyaraj said, “Well, the producer paid me well, and SS Rajamouli (director) told me to, that’s why I kept it and kept the answer a secret!”
In a career spanning 44 years, Sathyaraj has acted in nearly 250 films. He shares, “Most of my films are in Tamil, I did three films in Telugu, two in Malayalam, and one in Hindi, 'Chennai Express' (2013).”
Why didn’t he take up more work in Hindi after making his debut in a film directed by Rohit Shetty? He confesses, “I do get Hindi offers. I was offered a Tiger Shroff film recently, which required me to be 40 days in London. My family situation is such that I can’t go abroad for so many days. Then there was a film with Vidya Balan, but on the same dates as the one required by ‘Veetla Vishesham’. The problem is that I speak fluently only in my mother tongue, even English I barely manage. I can speak other languages if I get a prompt.”
