Now that the second lockdown is over, the actress, who first found acclaim as a TiTok and Dubsmash entity, has resumed shooting for Vishal-starrer Enemy in Hyderabad. And she is sure feeling nice to get back to work. Mrinalini tells us that the film has a few more days of shooting left including one song, after which they’d be done.
The actress, who plays Vishal’s love interest in the action thriller, reveals that she will be seen as a urban girl. “In my last two films, I played a village belle, but Enemy is set in a Singapore backdrop, so I play a classy girl,” she says, adding that she’d play a soft-spoken girl who displays a lot of maturity.
Learning from Vishal
Shooting for the film has been a great experience for the Gaddalakonda Ganesh actress. While talking about the film, she shares that Vishal always springs surprises. “I was initially nervous to talk to him, but he’s always chilled out on the sets. He broke the ice and we had great conversations about cinema,” she states.
Speaking about Vishal, she recalled an incident that left an imprint in her mind. “While shooting in Dubai, I was surprised to see him patiently waiting for his shot the whole day without any airs. That was a lesson for me on how to remain grounded,” she adds.
Choosing her pathways
Before she began shooting for Vishal’s film, the actress was also offered lucrative films although she tells us that she was happy to go easy and pick up roles that suit her.
“I’d rather be happy to be part of a film where my role creates an impact even if I have a lesser screen time than been seen throughout the film without making any impact. I never had any qualms of screen time,” she expresses. A self-confessed foodie, Mrinalini says the best aspect of shooting in Hyderabad is that the city offers best varieties of south-Indian dishes.
Dubsmash to dubbing
Before entering films, Mirnalini was working with IBM. But even before that, she was garnering much popularity as an acclaimed social media face, making Dubsmash videos. Then, movies happened to her, and three days after the release of Gaddalakonda Ganesh, she quit her job and entered showbiz full time. The gamble paid off and as a well-known actress, Mirnalini’s makeover has been complete. “The transformation has been great,” she confesses.
However, even as things were picking up pace in the film world, things suddenly slowed down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The toughest challenge for me was to do something productive during the pandemic. Not doing anything suddenly affected me, and it was so depressing,” she reveals. Even so, she remembers that the first wave was like a holiday. In fact, she even regularly posted her videos back then. “But the second wave was scary,” she says, revealing that her mother was down with COVID-19.
Changing priorities
With her mother contracting the virus, Mrinalini decided to put her energies to something else besides making videos. “My mother was home-quarantined because she had mild symptoms. But I was clearly not in a mood to post. I stayed off social media. My focus was on getting her to the best doctor, building her immunity, cooking for her, etc. I was in a restricted mode,” the Super Deluxe actress recalls.
