Having proved her mettle in all four South industries, Shraddha Srinath is looking forward to her Bollywood debut with Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Milan Talkies opposite Ali Fazal.
“Tishusir was looking for a girl to play the lead and a writer friend of his had watched Vikram Vedha, so he asked him to check me out. ‘My writer has given a suggestion for an actor, so I called you for an audition,’ is what he told me. Then he sent me a script and I auditioned. After that he asked me to shoot it again with the camera closer to me. It was the quickest audition ever,” she recalls.
The film’s plot revolved around the dream of a man (played by Ali Fazal) to become part of the showbiz.
However, the first question she was asked was whether she knew Hindi or not? “‘Hindi mein baat karni aati hai?’ (You know how to speak in Hindi). Well, I am from an army background. My dad is in the Defence forces and I have travelled enough in the north to get my Hindi right,” says the actress for whom this film was different from U Turn, Vikram Vedha and Kohinoor.
“It is a love story and I have not played such a role before. Every night before the shoot, I would read the script and smile because the script is so lovely,” she says.
Interestingly, Shraddha has played a cameo in Mani Ratnam’s Kaatru Veliyidai where the lead actor, a pilot gets captured in Pakistan during the Kargil War. What is even more interesting is that, IAF pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s father Rtd. Air Marshal Simhakutty Varthaman was a defence consultant on the film.
“Oh my god! I did not know that. Was he a consultant on that film?” asked the pleasantly surprised actress.
She will soon be seen rubbing shoulders with Thala Ajith and Vidya Balan in the Pink remake. “I am playing the role that Taapsee did in the Hindi film. But no, I haven’t watched that film as yet,” she said.
