Jobi Kodakara says a production manager had asked him not to share pictures before release, and that his face appears nowhere in the film's climax.
Jobi Kodakara, the man who stood in for Mohanlal in parts of Jailer 2, has walked back his release-day social media posts after they set off a small storm online.
The photos, shared the day the film hit theatres, got fans speculating about just how much of Mohanlal's climax sequence was actually shot with a double. Some posts online even claimed the star's face had been swapped out entirely. Jobi has now said that's not true.
Speaking to YouTube channel Jango Space, he said his involvement was limited to one or two shots in the airport portion of the climax, nothing more. He was specific about what made the final cut: close-ups of hands changing gears, a leg pressing the accelerator. That's it.
"To be honest, only one or two shots featuring me have been used in the film. Only parts of my hands and legs are visible," Jobi said. "My face has not been shown anywhere in the film. The face that people claim was used in the climax is not mine. I am certain about that."
So why post the pictures at all if he knew they'd be sensitive? Jobi says it came down to excitement, plain and simple. Getting to work on a film with Rajinikanth at the centre of it, even in a small, physical capacity, was enough for him to want the world to know. He'd been told otherwise.
According to Jobi, the production team had specifically asked him to hold off on posting anything until after the film opened. He didn't. The pictures went up on release day, the reaction turned sour fast, and he pulled them down soon after.
"It was a mistake," he admitted, acknowledging the backlash had gotten to a point where silence wasn't an option.
Body doubles doing climax or stunt work rarely make news on their own, Jailer 2's scale and the Rajinikanth-Mohalal pairing meant even a handful of leaked frames were enough to set off a debate on whether iconic action beats were genuinely performed by the stars or stitched together in post. Jobi's clarification doesn't fully settle that argument for everyone online, going by the chatter, but it does narrow down exactly what was and wasn't him.
Whether the makers of Jailer 2 choose to address the controversy themselves, or let Jobi's interview be the final word on it, isn't clear yet. For now, the photos are gone and the explanation is out there. What happens to the clip doing the rounds, reportedly showing a "deleted scene," is a separate question nobody official has answered.
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