Stardom is not a goal for me: Kani Kusruti of Girls Will Be Girls

“All actors aren’t stars and that’s okay. Becoming a star is not a goal for me,” says Kani Kusruti, 38.

This helps explain how she picks her projects — small roles in films that gleam. It also helps explain her Instagram descriptor, which declares in all-caps that she isn’t open to paid partnerships or ads. “I have a lot of respect for people who (monetise Instagram), but I don’t feel like I have to participate in this as well,” she says.
Kusruti has over 240,000 followers anyway. She is a woman on the move. She recently played Kirtima, the other woman, in the Netflix series Killer Soup, directed by Abhishek Chaubey. Her other recent release, Girls Will Be Girls, won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah last month. Director Shuchi Talati’s debut traces an unlikely emotional love triangle between a young mother (Anila, played by Kusruti), her teenage daughter, and a boy who has recently joined her daughter’s school.
“In the world of Killer Soup, which has some delicious characters, I thought Kirtima was the least interesting. For me, the bigger draw was the opportunity to work with Abhishek whose work I have always loved,” she says. (Chaubey’s films have included the critically acclaimed Sonchiriya and Udta Punjab.)
“I was a little intimidated by him initially,” she adds, “but came away absolutely charmed. He’s the kind of director who can extract a performance out of anyone.”
That’s a modest thing to say. She stands out in the rather pitchy Killer Soup. And while Talati’s directorial prowess shapes Girls Will Be Girls, Kusruti stands out again, subtle, authentic and almost menacing in her loneliness and yearning.
Kusruti made her debut in the Malayalam anthology film Kerala Cafe, in 2009. Small roles in Malayalam films such as Shikkar (2010), where she played a Naxalite, and Cocktail (2010), where she played a sex worker, followed.
Her turn as a lawyer looking for her brother’s killers in the 2015 Malayalam thriller series Eswaran Sakshiyayi made her a household name in Kerala. Then came Sajin Baabu’s Biriyaani (2019), in which she played Khadeeja, a dissatisfied wife who settled scores in a most unusual way. That role earned her a Best Actress trophy at the Kerala State Film Awards, and Best Actor Female at the BRICS Film Festival held on the sidelines of the Moscow International Film Festival in 2020.
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Speaking from her home in Panaji, Kusruti makes a confession.
It’s not reflected in her filmography, but she yearns to do comedy, she says. “I am hardly ever offered a comedic part, but if I was, I’d do it without thinking twice.”
As for the projects she has taken on, some she chose in order to be part of an interesting ensemble. “When I made Eswaran Sakshiyayi, I was living in Mumbai and shooting the serial gave me a chance to return to Kerala.” And sometimes “you work only because there’s no better way to practise your craft and earn money.”
Kusruti puts her pragmatism down to her parents. Her father is the activist Maitreya Maitreyan; her mother, Dr Jayasree AK, is a professor of community medicine, a social activist and an author. They live in the village of Cheruvakkal in Thiruvananthapuram district.
“My parents aren’t married. I call them by their names. People see my childhood as unconventional, but to me, it was just regular,” she says. “I also grew up around my grandparents, who had a lot of conservative values. No one forced their beliefs on anyone. I went to temples though my parents were atheists.”
She was 10 when her father enrolled her in a theatre workshop conducted locally by Footsbarn, a British touring company. Five years later, she was offered her first role, in a contemporary Malayalam adaption of the 7th-century Sanskrit farce Bhagavadajjukam.
Kusruti fell in love with the stage. “It really helps give you clarity. You become more grounded and everything else fades away. The process of doing a play also involves interacting with a lot of people and I think it made me a better person; I understood myself more,” she says.
At 17, she picked her own last name. Kusruti is Malayalam for Mischievous. Her father had picked his own last name too: Maitreyan is Sanskrit for Compassionate. (Her mother opted to shorten her last name to initials; the aim in all three cases being to erase the social signalling that surnames provide.)
Kusruti then enrolled at the School of Drama and Fine Arts in Thrissur, moved on to L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
She learnt to immerse herself in plot and setting. “We were taught to just get into the space and act. If the external is in place, then the internalisation of the character should occur naturally. This is very similar to the approach involved in our traditional art forms, such as Koodiyattam and Kathakali.”
Kusruti believes this approach has made her more malleable as an actor, able to adapt to a range of cinematic styles. “So much of Biriyaani was shot guerrilla-style, in public spaces. Sajin often couldn’t even shout ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’. He would just nod to signal that the camera was rolling. So, he couldn’t give me explicit direction. He just let me be,” she says. “Shuchi was very gentle when it came to helping me find Anila’s character. I had thought she’d go from internal to external but she got me started on Anila’s physicality — how she would walk or sit. And Abhishek first wants to see what his actors can bring to a scene, and points out only what you might be missing.”
There is one constant between her and her characters, one that she cannot do without, she adds, and it is empathy. “Even when someone wrongs my parents, they try to understand the ‘why’.” So, the characters needn’t be good people. But they do have to contain elements of nuance and humanity.
Kusruti’s next role will be that of a forest officer in Kerala, in the Amazon Prime drama series Poacher, directed by Richie Mehta and due for release this year. “Though I have a short role, I think the character is shaped very well,” she says.
But first, she will take a few months off to recharge. “I’d like to do some kind of refresher before heading back to work,” Kusruti says. “Like any craft, it’s important to learn, practise and unlearn. As with any job, you should continue honing your skills.”