JOIN USComedy with empathy
Naveen Richard’s latest on Amazon Prime Video is ‘Relatively Relatable’ and starts off with him saying how much he loves Bengaluru and its audience. That’s a sentiment he brought to his chat with Showtime.
“I speak only as much as Hindi as any Bengalurean would and it has the right amount of chill. It’s hard to explain but the city is home,” he says.
The 55-minute standup special talks about everything from learning how to swim to putting food away in the fridge.
“When I wrote this seven-eight months ago, I was at a place in my life where I felt that the world needed to be kinder and more empathetic. I felt the world was losing the plot and people were easily offended. I don’t know if people agreed when I did the show but empathy is the biggest theme for the special,” he says.
One of the biggest things he has learnt in the entertainment industry is patience. “As a comedian, you have to learn to keep your cool. There could be many instances — from the audience talking to each other or at you to you messing up your lines — you have to learn to be in the right frame of mind,” he says.
Working with friends
Whether it is web series productions like ‘Better Life Foundation’ and ‘Pushpavalli’ or stand-up shows like ‘Comicstaan’, a large part of Naveen’s career has been working with friends Sumukhi Suresh, Kaneez Surka, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Kanan Gill and Kenny Sebastian.
He only gets honest opinions from them. “It’s like I can have trial runs with them before putting it out to my audience,” he says.
Creation of characters
Naveen’s fans are probably talking about his latest character Pankaj in ‘Pushpavalli,’ the web series in which he plays an abusive, rude and yet caring owner of a children’s library, but another character that made him famous is Uncle Francis in YouTube channel ‘Them Boxer Shorts’.
“Oh, man! Uncle Francis was born when one of my friends was cleaning up her house and found an old pair of glasses and later, on another set, we found a moustache. Since my personality, as I am told, is sort of like an uncle anyway, I thought it would be pretty cool to give Uncle Francis life,” he recalls.
Uncle Francis is a Tamil uncle who makes fun of carpooling, dating and his maid’s fondness for ladies’ fingers dishes.
In order to keep the character alive during the quarantine period, Naveen is talking about his favourite songs.
As for Pankaj (his character in ‘Pushpavalli’), Naveen believes he may need therapy. “I mean, that guy has issues. But it’s also because he’s constantly being used by someone and that’s why he puts on the tough-guy attitude. He was a lot of fun to play though,” says Naveen.
Movie in the making
Naveen wants to work on a movie next. “There are certain movies that are better when shown in theatres. So let’s see if mine is going to be only on OTT or in the theatres. As of now, the movie-making idea is something I am working on,” he says.