Though prosthetic makeup was considered, Kangana Ranaut was keen to add a few kilos to essay the role of former CM Jayalalithaa in the biopic titled Thalaivi,” revealed director Vijay when DC caught up with him recently. There will be special makeup Hollywood artistes flown in from US to tend to Kangana’s looks in the film.
The star will also take coaching classes in Tamil for the role. Vijay also revealed that Kangana was the whole team’s first choice to portray JJ. “Some names like Vidya Balan and Aishwarya Rai were also considered, but Kangana was everybody’s choice.” The film is to be made in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi and Vijay says Kangana has allocated the next 1 1/2 years of her call sheet for Thalaivi .
“We have also appointed a Tamil teacher for her to learn the language. The story begins from Jaya madam’s first film in Kannada Chinnada Kombe when she was 16. It will focus on how Jayalalithaa Amma reigned supreme in a male-dominated world. Her knowledge, wisdom and intelligence were incomparable which made her the Iron Lady that she was. That was my main inspiration to make a biopic on her,” he explained.
The Devi director admits that it was his biggest blessing to work with a legend like Vijayendra Prasad, who also wrote the screenplay of Kangana’s earlier film Manikarnika. “It gives me immense happiness to work under Vijayendra Prasad’s supervision for Thalaivi.”
Ask him if Sai Pallavi has been roped in to play Sasikala and he denies, “No, not at all! Except Kangana, we have not finalised anyone in the cast. The process is still going on. We have brought on board GV Prakash for music and he has already started working on the compositions.”
