Prathap’s journey to leading-man territory hasn’t exactly followed the conventional movie-star playbook. He began his film career working as an editor before gaining increasing recognition as an actor. And even with successful films behind him, there is no grand declaration that he has “arrived”.

Quite the opposite.

“I’m still learning. I’m still insecure. I’m still tense,” he said. “But I’m trying my best. I’m trying to break my comfort zone. That’s the only drive I have to do more movies.”

It’s refreshingly unstarry for a man coming off Malayalam cinema’s biggest worldwide grosser.

More significantly, Prathap doesn’t seem particularly interested in spending the next few years repeating the kind of characters that audiences already know and love him for.

“When I’m hearing a lot of movies with the same templates which I’m doing, I never had any excitement,” he said.

Then came It’s A Medical Miracle and one rather epic narration.

“When I heard the script, I heard the narration for four hours, I think. But that four hours was something which broke all my decisions, and I decided to do something new. I just jumped into that pool.”

Four hours is a serious narration. But clearly, something worked.

Why he waited to become a leading man

Interestingly, It’s A Medical Miracle isn’t the first opportunity Prathap has had to headline a film.

He says other lead roles came his way, but he wasn’t prepared to say yes simply because his name would appear at the top of the poster.

“I got many opportunities to do as a lead, but I was not ready to do it because of many reasons,” he said.

“Sometimes the script was not exciting. But when I heard this movie, I felt it’s equally exciting, it’s equally experimenting, and also something which fits.”

That willingness to wait is telling.

The supporting roles gave him the luxury of making an impact without carrying an entire movie on his shoulders. The Medical Miracles removes that safety net.

And Prathap seems to know it. He describes the film as an experiment, particularly in its storytelling and use of sound.

“It’s a very experimental movie. We have given so much importance to sound. This movie has a new narrative style and so many exciting factors,” he said.

He isn’t giving away too many details about where that experimentation takes audiences, but he is prepared to make one fairly bold promise.

“I’m giving an assurance that you won’t leave the theatre with disappointment. You will get something new.”

That’s quite a guarantee from a man who, minutes earlier, cheerfully admitted that he remains insecure and tense.

But perhaps that contradiction sums up Prathap rather nicely at this point in his career.

He has Premalu behind him. He now has the record-breaking Bethlehem Kudumba Unit. And rather than immediately retreating into the comfort of playing variations of the funny, lovable guy audiences have embraced, he is choosing a project that makes him nervous.

Married, 30 and apparently age-defying

There was one other revelation during our conversation that caught me completely off guard. When I asked Prathap whether his newfound popularity meant women were approaching him with marriage proposals, he calmly informed me: “I am already married.”

Clearly, I hadn’t done enough homework.

“You look like a child,” I told him, before discovering that he is, in fact, 30.

His response to the suggestion that life — married, 30, with blockbusters behind him and his first lead role ahead — must be looking pretty good was characteristically restrained.

“Hopefully. I still have a long way to go!’

But when the conversation returned to It’s A Medical Miracle, his answer was far more emphatic.

“This movie will be my after and before,” he said.

The phrase may have arrived in reverse, but the sentiment couldn’t be clearer.

For an actor who began behind the scenes, built recognition through supporting roles and has now found himself inside one of Malayalam cinema’s biggest box-office stories, It’s A Medical Miracle represents something more personal: the moment he steps out without the safety of an ensemble and asks audiences to follow him.

And after watching the “small movie” he helped make become anything but small, Sangeeth Prathap is all set to find out what happens when the spotlight is finally his.