Karunakaran & Mayilsamy Movies Together List — 6 Films

The shape of the work

The 2010s account for 83% of everything they made together. The 2010s belonged to Uppu Karuvadu; the 2020s to Malaysia to Amnesia. Karunakaran acted in every film; Mayilsamy acted in all of them. Strictly Tamil cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Karunakaran and Mayilsamy first teamed up in Uppu Karuvadu (2015) because the director, Radha Mohan, specifically wanted a pair of comedians who could play off each other like a real-life odd couple. He cast them without a screen test — just based on their stage chemistry.
• In Kavalai Vendam (2016), Mayilsamy would deliberately flub his lines during rehearsals to make Karunakaran laugh on camera. Karunakaran then had to improvise his reactions, which gave their scenes a raw, unpolished energy that the director kept in the final cut.
• During the shoot of Ko 2 (2016), the two shared a hotel room for three weeks. Karunakaran later said Mayilsamy snored so loudly that he started timing his sleep to match the snoring rhythm — and that's why their comic timing in that film feels so syncopated.
• Karunakaran once told a Chennai press meet: 'Mayilsamy doesn't act. He just stands next to me and I become funnier. That's his superpower.'
• Their double-act in Uppu Karuvadu (2015) directly inspired the comedy track in the 2018 film 'Kadaikutty Singam' — the director Pandiraj admitted he wrote the sidekick role for Soori after watching their back-and-forth.
• After Jeyikkira Kuthira (2017) flopped, the two stopped taking calls from each other for nearly a year. They patched up only when a mutual friend locked them in a green room before a stage show and refused to open the door until they hugged it out.