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L2 Empuraan director reveals Lucifer Mohanlal's car scene was inspired by Rajinikanth's real life story

PUBLISHED DATE : 20/Mar/2025

L2 Empuraan director reveals Lucifer Mohanlal's car scene was inspired by Rajinikanth's real life story

L2: Empuraan (L2E) is a Mohanlal lead political action thriller that is all set for a theatrical release on March 27, 2025. The movie, a sequel to Mohanlal starrer Lucifer (2019) had a trailer release in multiple languages on Thursday, and Superstar Rajinikanth was the one to release the Tamil version on X. 

 

 

Not only did L2E director Prithviraj Sukumaran thank the Tamil actor, but he had also revealed previously that Rajini was the first to watch the L2E trailer before its official release on YouTube. Mohanlal had previously made a cameo appearance in Rajinikanth's Jailer (2023), out of the friendship he shares with the actor. So Rajini supporting Lalettan's film wasn't seen out of the ordinary. 

 

 

However Prithviraj Sukumaran, director of both Lucifer and L2: Empuraan has now shared details, which imply that Rajini's support for L2E may be a reciprocal of Prithviraj's respect towards Rajinikanth too. 

While promoting L2E in Tamil Nadu, Prithviraj revealed that a crucial car scene in Lucifer (2019) where Mohanlal's character Stephen Nedumpally aka Khureshi Ab'ram is stopped by a cop due to a PM convoy passing, is inspired from Rajinikanth's real life story that happened in 1992 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. 

 

 

The biographical book, The Name Is Rajinikanth, writtenby Gayathri Sreekanth throws light on Rajinikanth's 1992 car incident with then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, with whom he shared the same residental area, Boes Garden. The book states,

 

Rajinikanth’s car is stopped suddenly, A senior uniformed police officer taps his car window. The driver lowers it,  “Sorry, Sir,” the policeman says. “No traffic jam can move until the CM’s entourage drives past the road.”

“When will that happen?” asks Rajnikanth.

“Ahem! Maybe, in half an hour from now, Sir.”

“I am sure no car is so big to take half an hour. Why don’t you allow the crowd and vehicles to move until then?”

“Sorry, Sir, orders.”

“Are you deliberately stopping me?

Silence.

“Restless” and angry, “and unable to wait indefinitely”, the actor’s “sharp mind devises a way out”.

Rajnikanth stepped out of the car, walked towards a “box shop”, bought a packet of 555, leaned against a lamppost and lit a cigarette.

Within seconds, people were making a “beeline” for the screen star who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

Dr Radhakrishnan Road soon became an “umbrella of human heads”.

Aware that Jayalalithaa’s motorcade was minutes away, the police officer in charge of the area’s traffic rushed towards Rajnikanth and requested him to move away.

“Sir,” the actor replied, “I’m waiting for her to pass. I don’t mind waiting.”

 

This 1992 car stopping incident was one of the many reasons Rajnikanth openly voiced support for the alliance between the DMK and the Tamil Manila Congress, the breakaway group Moopanar formed just before the 1996 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The 1996 Tamil Nadu elections costed Jayalalithaa her CM position, and an indefinite bond to form between the DMK and Rajinikanth.

In Lucifer and L2: Empuraan movies, Mohanlal plays a rising politician named Stephen Nedumpally who also leads a double life as an internationally wanted trade criminal named Khureshi Ab'ram. According to writer Murali Gopy's story, Stephen Nedumpally is adopted and raised by the Kerala Chief Minister, who dies in the Lucifer movie.

 

When the CM's biological daughter, played by Manju Warrier asks her party cadre to prevent Stephen from attending her father's funeral, the scene cuts to a cop from Tamil Nadu stopping Mohanlal's car citing the passing of a PM convoy as a reason. However just like Rajinikanth in real life, Mohanlal casually steps out of the car and starts walking, causing the crowd behind barricades to follow his character. (scene: 3: 51 - 8: 25 below) 

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