At 16, she had already begun her ‘entertainment’ journey, and now she has earned her place among the best in TV anchors and small screen actresses with five tele-serials to her credit, including the recently-concluded Kannada serial Shubha Vivaha, and one in Tamil titled Mahalakshmi which completed 200 episodes. Kavya Shastry, who is also a painter and has a visual arts degree, earlier worked as journalist and even assisted Crazy Star V Ravichandran with his film scripts. She speak about her multiple roles, directorial ambitions along with scores of social awareness campaigns she involves herself in.
“After my Kannada serial Shubha Vivaha, which earned me great recognition portraying Shraddha, I took up Kannada reality show Bigg Boss. Later, it was my Tamil serial Mahalakshmi where I essay the female lead that got acclaim. It recently completed 200 episodes and is among the most popular teleserial on Tamil TV. Back in Bengaluru, I don multiple roles — as an anchor, presenter at entertainment and corporate events, and I also started my own venture Bitti Pictures, which at present is a non-profit enterprise, primarily involved in making short films based on short stories of renowned writers,” reveals Kavya Shastry.
The sole intention of Bitti Pictures is to celebrate short stories with a larger audience. “As it is without any profits, it is moving at a slower pace. We are even taking the films to short films festivals across the globe. I am also in talks about doing an art film in Kannada though I cannot divulge more till a formal announcement is made. Further, directing a film has been a passion ever since I started learning film making assisting Ravi Sir. I have a couple of scripts ready, and soon directing films will also come to the fore.”
Apart from juggling Kannada and Tamil, she focuses a lot on social service and awareness campaigns. “I make time for social causes, and work at various awareness campaigns. If some admirers and followers take up noble causes to give back to society, that would really help. I was recently involved in the campaign against the Blue Whale game, in identifying vulnerable schools and wards,” she says.
While Kavya never chose entertainment as a career, it chose her by accident. “Even my first film Yuva with Duniya Vijay was an accidental venture. Impressed with my work, I was offered a film though I was convinced that it would be a small role but the small role ended up being the female lead,” she adds.
Kavya was in the news for taking on a couple of perverts who crossed limits on social media. “I decided to answer this. It is necessary to teach lessons to perverts who pass comments on women in such an obscene manner. I received a lot of negative comments but I took them on and made them apologise. One of them was rusticated from his job. While I agree that not every person can handle such issues individually, but there is a limit for everything”. Definitely, the need of the hour.
