National-award winning director Thiagarajan Kumararaja, says that his second directorial venture, Super Deluxe will be a mixed bag of emotions for the audience. “The film is being speculated as an anthology, but it isn’t. It has scenes that will make one cry while the person next to you might have a good laugh. It can’t be enclosed to one specific genre,” he clarifies as we begin the conversation. 

“There are several characters from Vijay Sethupathi as Shilpa, Samantha as Vembu, Mysskin as Arputham, Fahadh Faasil as Mukhil and Ramya Krishnan as Leela. How each of these characters is connected to one another through an incident is the crux of Super Deluxe. We named the film Super Deluxe because the character of Shilpa, is a notch above the others,” he reveals.  While Thiagarajan Kumararaja ideated the basic plot, the story is written by directors Nalan Kumarasamy, Mysskin and Neelan K Sekar. 

“I asked them to write the plots because I was lazy to write,” laughs the director. He adds that nobody knows who wrote what and even the writers have no idea about which part of the film their story will feature. “I just shared the idea with them and they gave me their stories. I put everything together into one and tweaked it for the screen,” he says. But was the director trio the obvious choices of writers for Thiagarajan? “Initially, I approached SJ Suryah to write the story. He said, he sentimentally didn’t want to do it. Then I asked Dhanush. He couldn’t do it due to various reasons,” he reveals. Super Deluxe has Vijay Sethupathi playing a transgender named Shilpa. “We shot the film for 80 days and it was indeed physically taxing. I initially planned this as a low-budget film. However, the budget kept increasing and being a producer, I realised that the film was worth it. Though Vijay Sethupathi plays a transgender, it is not a story that revolves around him or the life of transgenders. It revolves around 13 important characters, who have equal space in the film. The story is about events that happen in a span of six hours,” says Thiagarajan. 

Initially, it was actress Nadiya, who was roped in to play Leela, which later went to Ramya Krishnan. “There is a scene in the film for Ramya Krishnan. It is one of the most important scenes in the film and had about 88 retakes. In fact, this scene was one of the reasons for Nadiya to opt out of the film. We had shot this scene with Nadiya for two days Ramya told me if I wasn’t satisfied with the 88th take, she will opt out of the film too,” he quips. 

The director says that he doesn’t make films for kids or for ‘backward’ thinkers. “My films are for mature audiences. There are cuss words in the film. In fact, I am clear that the film will be certified with an ‘A’,” he concludes.