Behind Kattappa’s voice

For dubbing artiste Harishree Praveen, it is a big moment. Although he had lent his voice for numerous characters in his career, it was Kattappa of Baahubali who brought him to limelight. In his words, the feedback he receives from the crowd is bigger than an award. “Even an award wouldn’t make me joyful like this. I get a lot of positive response from Malayalees across the globe. The best part is that people recognise my voice and congratulate,” says Praveen.

In the first part too, it was he who lent voice to Kattappa, one of the prominent characters of the Baahubali saga. It was through Mankombu Gopalakrishnan that he became a part of the project.“He sent my voice clips along with others to Rajamouli during the making of Baahubali: The Beginning. Their team selected my voice for Kattappa and retained the same for the second part too.”

Bringing life to Kattappa was not easy for Praveen, especially in the second part. The second part shows two different shades of Kattappa enacted by veteran actor Satyaraj. “There are two extremes. The first part shows a jovial Kattappa who cracks jokes with Baahubali. He is an entirely different person in the scenes where he faces the character played by Nazar,” says Praveen. “The most difficult part was handling the humorous Kattappa. The audience would laugh only if my sound syncs with the character’s body language. I had to exert a lot of effort to bring that finish. That part actually took some time,” he adds.

The whole dubbing process of Baahubali Malayalam was completed in three days at a studio in Hyderabad. “After each attempt, we would watch the sequence to see how it would look in the theatre. We would evaluate the part and make changes if required.” And he believes that all those efforts bore fruit eventually.

In his opinion, everyone put their maximum effort to perfect their respective characters. “It is the voices of Baahubali and Kattappa that are discussed the most. Every artiste tried their best to beautify their task—be it Divya who gave voice for Devasena (Anushka Shetty) or Shoby Thilakan who lent voice to Palvaldevan (Rana Daggubati). But my favourite is the dubbing done for Nazar by P.Y. Jose,” says Praveen.