Suchitra Pillai loved playing multiple characters ‘just sitting in a studio’ for audiobook

New Delhi, Aug 21 (IANS) Actress, model and VJ Suchitra Pillai says that she enjoys doing audio shows as people appreciate her voice. The actress has narrated multiple characters including the lead protagonist in the audiobook ‘Naqaab’. She candidly speaks about being part of it and how she managed to play so many characters.

The audiobook is a psychological thriller written by J.P. Pomare and it revolves around a psychologist Margot Scott.

The 51-year-old actress briefs about her role saying: “This audiobook is about the psychologist, Margot Scott and her family and her clients. So to play her and all of her clients and family members, etc. was the challenging bit of it. But that’s the interesting thing about audiobooks, where you get to play so many characters and it’s all about voice.”

“You don’t have your expressions, you don’t have your face, you only have vocal expressions that you can depend on and not anything to do with your facial expressions, to tell a story, which is what is the most interesting part of doing this audiobook.”

She further adds on why she is interested in doing audio shows and says: “I’ve always appreciated the fact that people appreciate my voice and whatever I can do with it. To play so many characters, just sitting there in a studio and to just close your eyes and play so many characters is any actor’s dream.”

The story of ‘Naqaab’ is quite intriguing and is filled with suspense and thriller. Asked whether narrating this role difficult, she replies: “No special training for it. It was definitely difficult, I’m not going to lie, especially because some books are more narrator-based and you have one or two characters in it. The biggest thing for this one was that there are so many characters on the same page.”

“There were chapters where you would have Margot or husband or two kids, as well as the antagonist, all in one scene, and one had to switch between voices for all of these people. Even though one really doesn’t, they were all distinct voices, without a doubt, you can still hear Suchi in all of them, but they were all distinct voices.”

“So, but to switch from one – literally one line – to the next, especially when there’re other emotions involved if Margot was upset and the antagonist had this smirky attitude. The husband was a supplicating person, the daughter was being irritated, all of that in one sentence, without getting a break, that’s what really, really makes it interesting. And the process for this is when you get confused. You have a reference file when you go back and listen to the voice that you played for A,B,C and D, and then you get back to the chapter and you do it again. So yeah, that was the process that I followed,” adds the actress on the challenges she faced and the procedure followed by her to play multiple characters.

The ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ actress shares how this project is different from previous ones and says: “This one is very different! The other project I have done for Audible is ‘Adultery’ by Paulo Coelho. That was mainly about the protagonist and her husband or lover etc. So you had like maybe three, maximum four major characters as opposed to here where there are a zillion characters literally.”

‘Naqaab’ is available on Audible.