At her sea-facing house on East Coast Road, Ramya Krishnan is flanked by a small group of assistants and team members from the Super Deluxe team, setting up for a promotional shoot.
“I am a big fan of Padayappa . We watched it at a house party recently,” offers my colleague, shyly. “Really? You watch Padayappa at house parties?” asks the actor, looking surprised.
Even today, Ramya is best remembered as the menacing Neelambari from the 1999 Rajinikanth-starrer. Then there was Baahubali franchise of films, where she played Sivagami, the only character with a novel dedicated to her (by Anand Neelakantan).
We want to know if she sees her character in Super Deluxe as another career-defining film. “This one is more about the content than the actors,” she says, after a long pause. “It’s mostly Kumararaja [the director].”
Little is known about Ramya’s role (she remains very light-lipped) except that she plays a porn star in a ‘film within a film’, Mallu Uncut.
The role, she admits, is easily the most challenging in her career, which spans over three decades. One scene in particular — a single take shot — went up to 37 takes over two days.
“More than me, my assistants were the ones who were shocked,” she says, about the late hours and the seemingly endless retakes. One assistant, standing by her side, nods and guffaws silently upon hearing this.
But she was fine with all the hard work, she says, explaining that she picks her roles for different reasons – “some for money, some for popularity and name, some for passion. This was passion.”
Even before the first round of shooting began (Ramya shot for the film before she was replaced by Nadiya Moidu; she eventually came back on board), the actor realised that Kumararaja would be a very exacting and demanding director.
He sent her regular voice notes about dialogues, and once, even travelled to Bengaluru — where she was shooting — to tell her more about the character.
“I was scared by all the preparations, and I decided to be more prepared,” laughs the actor, who will be seen next in Gautham Menon’s webseries, Queen .
