‘I stayed in prison cell occupied by Ripper Chandran’: When Mohanlal recalled Sadayam’s haunting shoot

Veteran actor Mohanlal, celebrated for portraying a wide range of complex characters over nearly five decades, had once opened up about one of the most memorable roles of his career, Sadhanandhan, in the 1992 Malayalam classic Sadayam.

Speaking at the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters in 2020, Mohanlal revealed the unsettling atmosphere during the making of the film, directed by Sibi Malayil and penned by Jnanpith awardee M.T. Vasudevan Nair.

"After the film was released, many people called me and told me not to act in such movies. They said they couldn’t bear to watch it. Such was the feeling the film delivered," Mohanlal said.

"MT sir won a National Award for the script. Many powerful scenes were later deleted, which made it even more intense in its original form," he recalled.

The actor also revealed that the shoot took place inside Kannur Central Jail, where Mohanlal stayed in a cell once occupied by notorious death row inmate “Ripper” Chandran.

"The film was shot in Kannur Central Jail, and the room I stayed in during the shoot was once occupied by Ripper Chandran, who was on death row. Before him, a man named Balakrishnan had stayed there. The speciality of Kannur Central Jail is that two people can be hanged at the same time. An official even said the rope placed around my neck for the scene had actually been used to hang someone 13 years earlier. I don’t know how many actors have had such an experience," he said.

Sadayam, which also starred Thilakan, Nedumudi Venu, Murali, Sreenivasan, Maathu, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, and T.G. Ravi, told the story of Sathyanathan (Mohanlal), a convict awaiting capital punishment for the murder of two young girls and two men. Despite faring poorly at the box office, the film later achieved cult status, with Mohanlal’s performance often cited as one of his finest.