Actress Madhurima, who is making her debut with Vinay in a film titled Serndhu Polama directed by Malayalam filmmaker Anil Kumar, was recently in the news, as the director alleged to this newspaper, that Madhurima had been unprofessional while shooting in New Zeland. For her part, the actress comes clean, “All these allegations put by the director are baseless and are only to defame and malign me. There was no song extended, it was already there to establish romance between the hero and my co-actress Preethi. It was shot on the second week of February, when I had just come to New Zealand after completing my Telugu film.”
The actress also says that she was brought to New Zealand, “misinformed.” She says, “The production controller who was also my manager then, told me that I have been given a motel accommodation and an assistant. I was put up with an unknown family. He also promised to process my mother’s visa immediately and that she would join me within a week of my arrival at NZ. I would like to clarify that he messed this up on purpose, and I came to know that no invitation letter from the production house was given to my mother and her passport was retained for three weeks unnecessarily. It was done only to harass us because I had fired him from his managerial services towards me.”
Talking about production cost going high, Madhurima says that to her knowledge, there were no foreign technicians or high end equipments and camera hired or used. She adds, “They did not even have a monitor. On another occasion suddenly cops came, shooed off the team without warning and banned our cars from the area because our team was shooting on somebody’s private property without the owner’s knowledge.” The director in his allegations had stated that permissions had been given for a very limited time frame only. “If he had taken permissions, how wasn’t he aware of the property being private?,” she questions. “As far as we actors know, permissions were taken only for suburban roads, that’s the reason we had to always wait for roads and places to be empty to shoot,” she added.
Her list of woes doesn’t end there. Madhurima says that, “we weren’t given food on time, we were not treated well, the camera always rolled after three to four hours after our call time, some of my personal things were used for shoot and I was injured.” Elaborating on her injuries, she says, “When I came back to India from New Zealand, I had bruises and cuts on my hands and legs deep ones, which I got when I was filming the fight sequences. This happened because there was no fight master appointed for any of the fights in the film and the actors were locals who were randomly picked from roads and not professionally trained! Inspite of overlooking everything I was dedicated to my work and that will obviously reflect on screen. After having patience and working so hard all I wanted was to complete the film.”
Madhurima says that despite all the bad publicity, she has given her best towards the film. “After all the hard work that has gone into the film, I can only pray for its success. I respect all the work put in by everyone. But after all this when I realised that 90 per cent of my role is over and only three days of mine were left, I demanded my remuneration which, after much persuasion 70 per cent was cleared. We actors usually take 60 per cent remuneration before shooting abroad. As per my contract, remuneration was to be paid in mutually agreed installments, which never happened.”
She says that she had high regards and respect for the director as he is one of the senior directors in Malayalam industry. She elaborates, “We had a cordial relation on the sets. It is very shocking as to why the director is maligning me. I would want him to realise that doing all this under somebody else’s influence and helping somebody fight his personal battles over the media isn’t becoming of a man of such stature, nor will it gain any brownie points for the film. At the end the product has to be good enough to speak for itself.”
