Dressed in a floral outfit, Madhu Shalini gracefully surveys the excitement that surrounds the prospect of a media interaction with Kamal Haasan with a smile. In the minutes that tick by before the arrival of the veteran actor, we catch up with her. She can’t stop smiling while talking about how she landed the Tamil-Telugu bilingual Thoongavanam/Cheekati Rajyam .
“A friend of mine, actress Priya Anand, came to know that they were casting for this movie and asked me to give it a shot. The moment I got to know this is a Kamal Haasan film I was excited. They told me it wasn’t a full-length role but I wasn’t deterred,” she says.
Madhu describes her role as “brief but interesting” and one that required her to share screen space with Kamal Haasan. “I mean, who would say no to him? I got to learn so much on the sets. At one point, my character brings in the necessary twist in the film,” she says.
From the moment she signed up for the role, the project moved at a quick pace. “We started shooting within a week after I signed the film. The team was well prepared with pre-production and we all knew every scene that was going to be shot before going to the sets, including our dialogues,” she says.
The very fact that she is part of a Raj Kamal production threw open doors in the Tamil industry, in which she made a mark through director Bala’s Avan Ivan ( Vaadu Veedu in Telugu). “I am getting some good offers in Tamil. People there are surprised that I am the same girl from Bala’s film.
Fortunately, both in Tamil and Telugu, I’ve never done roles that seem repetitive,” she says. Though she was a part of films like Anukshanam and Gopala Gopala in Telugu, she admits good roles are hard to come by if one doesn’t play a typical heroine. At the same time, Madhu is happy to explore choices in other industries. “I don’t go by the perception that an actress has to look at opportunities elsewhere because she hasn’t clicked in one industry. Two Bengali films came my way but they didn’t work out. If a good film comes by, I wouldn’t hesitate to take it up, irrespective of language and region.”
