Darling devil

Actor Nikki Galrani, who debuts in Tamil with Darling, talks about playing a ghost in the film

Nikki Galrani

How often do we come across an actor who has completed five films across four languages even before any one of them released? We are talking about Nikki Galrani, a model-turned-actress who had offers flooding in, when she decided follow in the footsteps of her sister, Telugu actress Sanjjanaa. “I signed Ajith , my first film in Kannada, and within a few hours of its launch, I found myself signing Yagavarayinum Naa Kaakka (YNK) in Chennai. I signed two films in my first three days as an actress,” she says. The signing spree had begun.

As fate would have it, it was the Malayalam film 1983 , that she shot much later that first hit the screens, even though she’d already shot four other films. “I’ve managed to pick up a bit of all the four southern languages — I even dubbed in Tamil for YNK. I can also speak Hindi and English, but ironically, I can hardly speak any Sindhi, my mother tongue,” she laughs.

In horror-comedy

Darling , a Pongal release, she plays a ghost, a surprising choice for a debutant actress as the role demands that she look anything but pretty. “But I play a ghost that you will be rooting for, even if the main characters are petrified by it,” insists Nikki. The film stars composer G.V Prakash, who’s also making his debut as an actor. “I feel that his experience as a composer has helped him perform as an actor. On the sets, he didn’t seem like a newcomer at all; it was clear that his musical background was helping him emote convincingly. At the start, I felt he was a bit reserved but we soon got along like a house on fire. I am also guilty of taking advantage of his musical expertise; I made him teach me singing. I now know how to sing all the tracks of

Darling and even a few other songs such as ‘Penne Penne’ from

Irumbu Kuthirai .”

The shooting of

Darling was completed in just over a month. Nikki says, “Most of the shooting happened almost entirely during the night. As I’m a person who cannot sleep during the day, I ended up looking like a sleep-starved zombie during the shooting. I guess it was good in a way as it made me look convincing as a ghost, sometimes even without makeup,” she laughs.