At first glance, the second teaser of the soon-to-release Manmadhudu 2 seems to outline the two sides to Avantika, the character played by Rakul Preet Singh. She’s demure in presence of family and elders and away from their gaze, has a carefree side to her.
Broach this topic of dichotomy and Rakul explains, “There are no two faces to Avantika. People will understand when they see the film. Avantika is full of life. She’s vivacious yet mature. There are multiple layers to her; she’s been through a lot. I had a blast playing Avantika.”
In the film, she’s romancing a much older character (Nagarjuna) and it comes on the heels of her Hindi film De De Pyaar De in which she played a 20-something romancing a 50-year-old (Ajay Devgn). But for a similar pitching of a young woman with an older man, the storylines of both films are vastly different. Rakul adds, “The Manmadhudu 2 script and my character made sense to me and I decided to do it. It’s just that this film also needs the woman’s character to be much younger than the man.”
- The teaser of Manmadhudu 2 was subjected to trolling by a few who used the screenshots of Rakul’s character smoking and stated that it’s ‘deeply disturbing’, in a rebuttal to Samantha and Chinmayi who had expressed their views on a statement made by director Sandeep Reddy Vanga in a recent interview.
- Rakul is unperturbed: “I don’t smoke; I am a teetotaller. I don’t even have cheat days, people around me know me as a health and fitness-conscious person. What I do on screen is for a character and there’s no point in reacting to those who will judge me for it. If I check Twitter now, there would be 100 messages to which I can react, but I don’t. Trolls don’t know better and I feel sorry for them. In the last six or seven years, I’ve hit back only once. As long as my parents know what I am, I won’t be bothered.”
She has known director Rahul Ravindran even before she became an actress and refers to him as ‘ bade bhaiyya’ . Having liked Rahul’s debut directorial venture Chi La Sow , when he approached her for this film, she wanted to see what was in store for her: “He told me, ‘kiddo, you decide if you want to do this film or not’. I loved the part and looked forward to shooting. When I would get ready for the shoot, I would ask myself what a naughty person like Avantika would do today. We all bonded so well and had fun shooting — Nag sir, Jhansi, Lakshmi ma’am, and the entire crew,” says Rakul.
Rakul watched the 2002 runaway hit Manmadhudu after signing this film and asserts that the new film is not a sequel, “Both are feel-good stories; there’s no other similarity.”
Nagarjuna and Rakul in ‘Manmadhudu 2’
Manmadhudu 2 is Rakul’s full-fledged Telugu film after Spyder (2017). In between, she had the Tamil films Theeran Adhigaram Ondru ( Khakhee in Telugu), Dev and NGK . And now, post the success of De De Pyaar De , she’s part of director Milap Zaveri’s Hindi film Marjawan co-starring Siddharth Malhotra. Apart from a Telugu film co-starring Nithiin, she’s on the verge of signing another new Telugu and Tamil film. Weighing in on her choices, she says, “I was working on multiple projects in 2018 and five of my films are releasing this year. I often get asked if I’ve stepped away from Telugu cinema. There are only 365 days in a year and there’s only so much work I can do.”
Shifting between three industries hasn’t necessarily changed her outlook towards cinema, “I look at change as an ongoing process. When I entered the film industry in 2013, I didn’t know anything. Today I understand cinema and my craft much better.”
Rakul Preet Singh
Director Selvaraghavan’s NGK had her portraying a shrewd political campaign strategist, out of her comfort zone. She reflects, “I needed a visionary director [like Selvaraghavan] to look beyond the glamorous image and make me do something different. I loved it.”
She hasn’t been that lucky with a few other films though, for instance Theeran … ( Khakhee ). In the otherwise taut crime thriller, her role seemed like a weak link. Rakul is candid, “I can’t have everything on the platter. I heard the story and felt it would be a great film to be a part of. I was okay with the fact that I will be enacting a simple girl from a small town who’s deeply in love, and say, not a scientist. The romance between the lead characters was showcased beautifully. Theeran… went on to be a big hit. NGK , on the other hand, didn’t click.”
