When Khushboo and Suhasini Turned Acting Advice Into live Theatre at IFFI

By Pickle November 21, 2025

From on-set blunders to spontaneous stage magic, Khushboo and Suhasini show that acting is equal parts craft, courage, and never losing your sense of play.

What happens when two cinematic doyennes let their guard down and turn a festival workshop into a living, breathing masterclass? At the recent IFFI session, the answer was equal parts nostalgia, laughter, and a showcase of living legends in full form.

Actors Khushboo Sundar and Suhasini Maniratnam—each with decades of roles, reinventions, and regional hits—weren’t content to just talk shop. Instead, they made Kala Academy’s stage crackle with the kind of chemistry that only comes from years of loving, and sometimes surviving, the madness of cinema.

Suhasini, with trademark candour, kicked off by poking fun at her own “famous family confusion,” before steering the conversation to the heart of performance. Khushboo, ever the chameleon, insisted there’s no divide between art-house and mainstream for her—only the director’s vision and her willingness to become “soft clay.”

Their anecdotes wove together everything from swimming stunts crafted by directors to the humbling unpredictability of box office fate, as Khushboo recounted the rollercoaster of films loved by audiences and those loved only by their makers.

Even as the audience of starry-eyed hopefuls scribbled notes, the session became a crash course in the realities behind the reel. Suhasini’s advice—write your lines in your native tongue, rehearse relentlessly, and never assume language is a minor hurdle—rang especially true when Khushboo shared her early days wrestling with Tamil cues, Hindi notes, and the universal terror of forgetting lines in front of Mammootty.

But the afternoon’s alchemy really came alive in the unscripted moments: Khushboo, eyes brimming, revisited a beloved scene from Chinnathambi, and Suhasini transformed technique into emotion with a demonstration from Kannaki, joined mid-performance by dance master Kala. The line between actor and teacher blurred, and the session became a celebration not just of performance, but of vulnerability, mentorship, and the joy of being perpetually in rehearsal—onstage and off.

As the event closed with a flurry of questions and a standing ovation, these two legends proved that the greatest lessons aren’t just taught—they’re lived, shared, and sometimes, performed all over again.