Arjun Chakaravarthy did not exist on Instagram until a few weeks ago. He made his account public only after Vadhandhi Season 2: The Mystery Of Money dropped on Prime Video on August 7, and fans started tagging him for his turn as Sundaresan, a character who barely speaks a word across the show's eight episodes.

The series, directed by Andrew Louis and produced by Pushkar and Gayathri under Wallwatcher Films, stars Sasikumar and continues the investigative crime-thriller template that made the first season a hit. Chakaravarthy is the newcomer in the cast, and in a chat with Filmibeat Tamil he laid out exactly how much that debut cost him.

Trolled for his looks, then he got to work

He says people mocked his appearance and his skin tone early on, telling him his face wouldn't work on camera. Instead of backing off, he says it pushed him harder. He started eating clean, hit the gym, took every stage play he could find, sat through film workshops, and picked up mime, dance and fight choreography on the side. The goal, he says, wasn't to become an action hero. It was to become the kind of actor who disappears into any part, and he names Pasupathy as the reference point.

An office visit turned into an audition

His father works at Wallwatcher Films, and Chakaravarthy had been around the company for six years. He says Pushkar and Gayathri spotted him at the office one day and asked his father if he'd be open to auditioning. He cleared their round first, then a second test with Louis, who reportedly asked him point blank whether he could handle any scene thrown at him. Chakaravarthy says he told the director he wasn't walking away from a shot at a Vadhandhi sequel, hit-franchise or not. He got the part.

The scene that put him in bed for a week

The toughest stretch, by his own account, was a sequence where Sundaresan is tied and hung upside down. He says he skipped food from the morning of the shoot because he didn't want to feel sick during the hang, only for the actual shot to happen at 8 pm that night. Filming reportedly ran until 5 am, and by the time it wrapped, he says he couldn't get up on his own. He was in pain, in tears, and crew members had to lift him into a car and drive him home. He says he spent the following week recovering.

CutMirchi has not independently verified the production's account of the shoot conditions, and neither Wallwatcher Films nor Louis has commented publicly on the sequence Chakaravarthy describes.

He says the show took Louis three years to write and shoot, and close to two years of work from the cast. He's also, by his own admission, nervous about one particular verdict: he's a self-declared Vijay fan and says he can't stop wondering what the star would make of his performance. For now, he's waiting for viewers to decide first.