The voice behind the Malayalam dub of the famous American comedy sitcom- “Family Guy”, talks about his 2-month journey from 2k followers to 390k followers in an exclusive interview given early this week.
His Instagram content is reaching millions, owing to its freshness and quirkiness. He started doing Malayalam dubs of Family Guy shorts and posting them on his Instagram profile as an experiment. Surprisingly people liked it, and he started uploading more and more dubbed content. The credit for familiarizing the well-known American dark comedy sitcom-” Family Guy”, thus goes to this corporate employee turned content creator.
Nihal is equally happy and proud with the viewership reaching a maximum of 2 million for his most popular ones. When asked about what he thinks about this unexpected success, he says that the reason why people liked and accepted his content might be due to familiar Malayalam slangs, words and dialects used for the voices of characters in the show mainly Peter Griffin, Quagmire, Lois, Meg, Cleveland, Joe etc.
Since childhood, he was pretty good at talking and making voice impressions of actors- says Nihal. He says that his journey on social media was not quick like his sudden fame. He has tried making tiktoks, food vlogs and vines before, but they did not work that well. He confesses that he has even cut a cake when he hit 2k followers on Instagram thinking that it was the maximum he could achieve in his career as a content creator.
A reel with his daughter is the first one where he got sizable views. Then, he dubbed family guy reels as an experiment, making use of short breaks during work to record voices and these clicked for some reason. He posted more and more reels and the views skyrocketed from there. The rest is history.
He has faced many struggles as a small content creator. He used to dub while his baby was asleep. He had no advanced recording equipment nor any noise cancelling headphones. He adoringly states that his life partner Shahina helped him overcome his inferiority complexes and supported him through his hard times and plays a big role in making him what he is today. He values her opinions about his content and always seeks her help in making necessary corrections.
When requested by the interviewer, he talked, sang and even voiced famous Malayalam movie dialogues in Mallu peter’s voice. Peter’s voice has become a part of his life and he jokingly says that he talks in peter’s voice at home to his wife every now and then.
He openly talks about his fears when it comes to people misunderstanding him for a fraud since his content is inspired from an original show and so he made a watermark for his content named – ” Oru Kudumbakkaaran”(translation for “Family Guy”) which is mentioned in his bio.
When asked about his willingness in dubbing foreign language movies if he gets to, Nihal replied that he will be more than happy to do it. He also says that he is ready to try his luck with other cartoon shows.
However, his content also faces many criticisms that accuses Nihal for seemingly supporting homophobic, child rape, body shaming and ableist jokes in the original show by not avoiding such content in his dubs.
He responds to this criticism by stating that the show is originally about a dysfunctional family and that it uses homophobic, ableist, body shaming and racist jokes to point out their existence in our society. He declares that he is personally inclined to political correctness. The show mocks religion, racism and politics through its dysfunctional character portrayals and he also gives a disclaimer that “Family Guy” is a dark comedy show for adults featuring sex, violence and dark humor and requests people to watch it only if they are comfortable with it and is able to find humor in the dark jokes.
However, he promises that he would be more responsible in his future content and acknowledges the hurt viewers’ emotions. He confesses that in the beginning, he did not try to avoid offensive content as people liked it and that he is learning from his mistakes.
Nihal is yet to break other social media platforms, with currently 390k followers and still counting.
