Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Vishal Menon sits down with Girish AD in the middle of a very good Onam, with Bethlehem Kudumba Unit playing to full houses and spilling successfully into Tamil the way Premalu once spilled into Telugu. The conversation works backwards from the finished film into the seven years of drafts behind it — the age gap the writers argued over and capped deliberately, the decision that the girl would fall first because a much older man doing the wooing would curdle into something creepy, the Anna song nobody remembers that ended up carrying the romance, and the choice to deliver Justin's tragic backstory as an aside during a drinking scene rather than a tearful confession on a bridge. Girish is precise about what he does and does not write down: the seat belt in the church fight was scripted, the expressions never are.
Underneath the craft talk is a director interrogating his own reputation. He rejects the idea that his films are a window onto how he sees the world — the pleasant neighbourhoods, the ideal girlfriend, the warm family are all deliberate constructions by someone who says he sees the real world darkly and lives most of his life as a loner. He is candid that five hits have not touched his insecurities, which he calls part of his DNA, and that success has changed only superficial things, like being able to ask for a second serving of sambhar. He talks about cringe as a subjective meter he cannot calibrate for anyone else, about why he thinks no other filmmaker could remake his films, and about the anxiety that his stock of raw teenage memories will eventually run dry. He also names the one film of his own he cannot sit through, and it is not the one anyone expects.
Bethlehem Kudumba Unit is in cinemas now.
0:00 Intro
7:14 Working with Dileesh Pothan and Syam Pushkaran
14:04 Why love needs no single reason
20:10 The Anna song and other references
26:05 The seat belt in the car
33:40 Seeing the world through his eyes
40:40 What if the first films flopped
47:45 The one film he can't rewatch
#GirishAD #BethlehemKudumbaUnit #THRIndia
Vishal Menon sits down with Girish AD in the middle of a very good Onam, with Bethlehem Kudumba Unit playing to full houses and spilling successfully into Tamil the way Premalu once spilled into Telugu. The conversation works backwards from the finished film into the seven years of drafts behind it — the age gap the writers argued over and capped deliberately, the decision that the girl would fall first because a much older man doing the wooing would curdle into something creepy, the Anna song nobody remembers that ended up carrying the romance, and the choice to deliver Justin's tragic backstory as an aside during a drinking scene rather than a tearful confession on a bridge. Girish is precise about what he does and does not write down: the seat belt in the church fight was scripted, the expressions never are.
Underneath the craft talk is a director interrogating his own reputation. He rejects the idea that his films are a window onto how he sees the world — the pleasant neighbourhoods, the ideal girlfriend, the warm family are all deliberate constructions by someone who says he sees the real world darkly and lives most of his life as a loner. He is candid that five hits have not touched his insecurities, which he calls part of his DNA, and that success has changed only superficial things, like being able to ask for a second serving of sambhar. He talks about cringe as a subjective meter he cannot calibrate for anyone else, about why he thinks no other filmmaker could remake his films, and about the anxiety that his stock of raw teenage memories will eventually run dry. He also names the one film of his own he cannot sit through, and it is not the one anyone expects.
Bethlehem Kudumba Unit is in cinemas now.
0:00 Intro
7:14 Working with Dileesh Pothan and Syam Pushkaran
14:04 Why love needs no single reason
20:10 The Anna song and other references
26:05 The seat belt in the car
33:40 Seeing the world through his eyes
40:40 What if the first films flopped
47:45 The one film he can't rewatch
#GirishAD #BethlehemKudumbaUnit #THRIndia
