Anushka Shetty

The Warrior Among Women: A chat with Anushka Shetty

Saumesh Thimbath

When talking about Benedict Cumberbatch, the British actor, who played Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series ‘Sherlock’ and Julian Assange in ‘The Fifth Estate’, a commentator said that he has a face and aura that gives him a definitive edge in playing larger-than-life roles. The same holds true, in a way, for actress Anushka Shetty. The success of Anushka’s portrayal of brave and fiery women lies in a tactfully underplayed acting which has her tall figure to boot. The trend caught up with the unexpected success of ‘Arundhati’, which led to similar roles in movies like ‘Irandaam Ulagam’ (‘Varna’in Telugu). Anushka will be seen in warrior princess roles in two more films to be next year, S.S. Rajamouli’s ‘Bahubali’ and ‘Rudrammadevi 3D’.

She has also done movies like ‘Vedham’, which had an offbeat theme, were she acted as a prostitute which not many mainstream actresses would dare to do. But even while doing these movies, she portrayed typical eye-candy material in movies like ‘Singham 2’ where her importance shrank to the sounds of Surya’s intermittent roars. It makes it pretty hard to cast Anushka into any defined mould. So it was with these queries in mind that the Silly Monks team caught up with Anushka in Hyderabad where she had come to promote ‘Varna’, the Telugu version of ‘Irandaam Ulagam’.

Announcing on arrival that she is tired of answering standard and vague questions, she was ready for in-depth discussion of the movies that she worked on. As she has been part of three movies that had elements of fantasy and graphics, the discussion veered towards the Indian films aping Hollywood and the dearth of original fantasy stories in Indian movies.

Watch the full interview below.