The last we saw Pooja Kumar was in Kamal Haasan’s Uttama Villain (dubbed and released by the same name in Telugu). The film didn’t make much of an impact in Telugu, with a lot being lost in translation in the region-specific milieu. The actor who courted the spotlight with Vishwaroopam and then starred in the Tamil film Meen Kuzhambum Mann Panaiyum (Fish curry and the clay pot), is now looking forward to the release of her first Telugu film, PSV Garuda Vega 126.18M directed by Praveen Sattaru.
The actor divides her time between New York and India, and reveals that she has an international film and a Netflix drama series (an American production) in the pipeline, apart from Vishwaroopam 2 .
There’s a lot more to Pooja Kumar than we see in mainstream Tamil and Telugu cinema. In the past, she produced a short film titled 1001 Auditions and plans to produce four more short films. “The digital space is opening up all over the world and bringing content closer to its audience. There are interesting voices emerging and it’s a great time to be an actor. It doesn’t matter what age you are. Roles are being written for women up to the age of 75,” she reckons.
Living in the US and seeking roles that matter hasn’t always been easy. The digital space, she feels, is also paving way for multiculturalism, “The audience wants to see stories about different people and cultures — white, Asian, Caucasian, Spanish, Black… We just need more writers.”
Pooja spends her time away from film sets reading and collaborating with like-minded people. “In between my acting assignments, there are issues that I’d like to highlight and I plan to do these with my short films,” she avers.
Though she’s done those sporadic Tamil and Hindi films in the previous years, it was Vishwaroopam that got her noticed. She’s aware that she doesn’t fit the bill of a typical mainstream heroine. “But I don’t know what mould I fit into,” she laughs.
She looks for well-written characters. “I wish I could read something, get excited about it and immediately get to work on it. But it doesn’t happen that way, not here, not in international cinema. So when I chance upon something truly interesting, I don’t let it go. Praveen Sattaru gave me a 120-page script that read like a gripping page turner. I liked the script and how he had etched out each character,” she says.
PSV Garuda Vega is a thriller and she plays a homemaker to an NIA officer essayed by Dr Rajashekar. She calls it a path-breaking action drama, “My character is Swathi, a homemaker torn between her love for her family and the isolation she feels because her husband doesn’t devote time for her. I didn’t want Swathi to come across as a nagging wife. Swathi doesn’t know if her husband will return home safe each day. The sacrifice by the families of officers is not something we’ve discussed enough in our films.”
Ask Pooja how important is her character in the thriller and she quips, “I am there till the climax; I don’t disappear. I liked the way Praveen wrote Swathi’s character with a lot of layers and still kept it light. Let’s see how it turns out on screen. But we had a great time making it.”
Pooja discusses the challenges the team faced shooting in different weather conditions in Georgia, Bangkok and Malaysia, “We shot at a defunct oil rig in Malaysia where rains were unpredictable. We’d walk up several flights of stairs when the sky was clear and hurry down when it begins to pour. I’m sure this film will offer a good cinematic experience worthy of watching on large screen.” She calls PSV Garuda Vega a “Hollywood-like film with Indian emotions.”
She’s been getting offers from the Telugu film industry and is reading scripts. “I am open to good work here because my DNA is Indian. But I don’t let my own expectations weigh me down. Beyond acting, there’s something called life,” she signs off.
Training Days: Pooja Kumar was born in the US. Her parents moved from Dehradun to the US in the 1970s. She’s trained in Bharatanatyam and Kathak and honed her acting skills at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
