K. Ramya Sree
Actor-musician Alexx O’Nell, who was seen in Bollywood projects like Chittagong, Joker, Cheeni Kum, and Main Aur Charles, among others, is all set to take the next step in his career with a Tamil-language web series titled Sweet Karaam Coffee, along with actresses Madhoo (Roja fame) and Ayesha Kapur (Black fame). The show that is being premiered on Amazon Prime is receiving positive feedback.
Moreover, he bagged two big projects in Bollywood: Ae Watan Mere Watan opposite Sara Ali Khan and Vishal Bharadwaj’s Khufiya alongside Tabu and Ali Fazal.
The foreigner is so much in love with India that he had earlier released an independent track, A Bhagavad Gita Song, apart from Still On My Mind and Twenty Days.
Taking The Pioneer through his character in Sweet Karaam Coffee, the actor-musician shared, “Robert (myself), together with Julia played by Ayesha Kapur (of Black fame), personifies a culture and world view completely different from that of the three protagonists. Their differences, combined with their curiosity and respect, make the interactions between them interesting and important to the development of the characters. These moments, written with sincerity and humour, cause each of them to reconsider their preconceived notions about how life should be lived, and to me, that is part of what makes SKC so beautiful. As you can see from the trailer, Robert is a laid-back hippy traveller who, along with his lady love, is exploring India and all it has to offer. His chance encounter with the characters played by Madhoo, Lakshmi, and Santhy and their subsequent friendship put him on track to understand what he truly wants and helped him discover the courage to go after it.”
Alexx is of the nature that he always wants to work with actors more skilled and experienced than him because it invariably makes him better, and we guess that is what is making him thrive in this highly competitive industry, bagging one project after the other.
In order to shoot the road trip that the audience sees on screen, the cast and crew had to follow a similar path for the show. “The making of this series was indeed a real-life journey that touched upon some of India’s most beautiful landscapes and iconic sites. On this adventure, it was my good fortune to be paired on-screen with Ayesha, who happily became my sightseeing buddy off-screen. We explored the historic Jhansi Fort on one of our days off, climbed the ramparts of Gwalior on another, and wandered the beautiful
Chhatris Cenotaphs in Orchha on a free evening. Ayesha, our director, Krishna Marimuthu, and indeed the entire cast and crew were truly wonderful, and I had memorable adventures with many of them over the course of the shoot. Madhoo Ma’am and I even got the opportunity to visit the Taj Mahal together while we were in Agra!” shared the actor, who is returning to a Tamil project after almost 13 years. His previous outing in Tamil was A.L. Vijay’s classic Madrasapattinam, in which he worked alongside Amy Jackson and Aarya. After that, he teamed up with Vijay once again for a cameo in Thaandavam with Chiyaan Vikram in 2012. Along with these, he shot a couple films with Mammootty as well as Santosh Sivan’s epic Urumi (all in Malayalam).
After venturing into Tamil and Malayalam shows, we were curious to know if he wants to explore the Telugu industry as well, and to this he replied, “While I’ve had many of my films dubbed into Telugu, most notably Madrasapattinam, which was released as 1947: A Love Story, it remains one of the few Indian Regional industries I’ve not yet had the opportunity to work in directly. Each industry has a unique identity of its own, and while I look forward to working more in the ones I’ve become most well known in (mainly Hindi and Bengali), I do hope someday to return to doing more in Tamil and Malayalam and making my debut in Telugu too. It makes me very happy to see South Indian cinema getting the respect and reaching the wider audience that it has so long deserved. I look forward to being more active in the South Industry.”
Moreover, Alexx’s English pop song These Four Walls was released just yesterday. The title of the song itself sounds exciting. Isn’t it? Giving us a sneak peek into what the song is about and the inspiration behind it, he shared, “These Four Walls is incredibly exciting for me! It is the first song that I’ve recorded and shot in South Africa, and the sound of the audio and the look and feel of the video are completely different from anything I’ve released so far. The song actually began in India, where I recorded an acoustic version with my friend, the composer and producer, Debarpito Saha. And later, with the help of my South African producer David Pearce of Cosher Studios, we brought it into the Pop genre with a plucky bass line, a bit of 80’s-inspired synthesisers, and a fast, jumpy beat. Finally, the video’s director, Danie Nel, used the city of Cape Town at night as the setting for a quirky and captivating music video. So, while the song began like all my music does, with just my voice and an acoustic guitar, my South African team has brought an unmistakable Cape Town vibe to both the audio and the video.”
Being a foreigner, are you wondering how Alexx prepares for his dialogue on the sets of these non-native shows? Let us hear from him: “I read the screenplay a number of times and studied the dialogue, picking out clues to create the character. I understand the motivations behind what he says and does, and I literally write in the subtext to every word and action. I rewrite the entire screenplay, paying attention only to my character, filling in what happens off screen in the time between the scenes and making sure to carefully note what he knows and does not know about what happens in the moments where he is absent. And, of course, when the dialogues are in anything but English, I work with a dialogue coach to get them as close to perfect as possible. And once I’ve spent months preparing, I take a break and try to arrive on set both meticulously prepared but also relaxed enough to change it all in the moment based on how the scenes develop with my director and my co-actors.”
On the work front, the actor is thrilled about Khufiya and Aye Watan Mere Watan. He has three other films and another Amazon Original series awaiting release.
But right now, he is happy with the response that Sweet Karaam Coffee is getting.
