Gayatri Bhardwaj, the leading lady of Ravi Teja’s next Tiger Nageshwar Rao, spoke to The Pioneer and shared tidbits about the movie, Ravi Teja’s village look, her role, the homework she did for it, and more.
SHIKHA DUGGAL
It’s an intriguing tale on how Gayatri Bhardwaj joined the cast of the Tiger Nageshwar Rao movie, which stars Ravi Teja. It’s intriguing because she was never given the opportunity to audition for the part in this Tollywood’s bigwig’s movie. It was the director’s trust in her capabilities and his thought of extracting her potential, that she immediately joined this massive project.
Gayatri can’t wait to sign innumerable projects going ahead in South cinema. The actress who has just finished doing a series for Amazon mini TV with the name Highway Love, on the video interview, informed us, “The first pointer my director gave me was—Gayatri, forget about your appearance in Tiger Nageshwar Rao, because your costumes and hair styling will be taken care of, but what you have to work on is the quirk and oddity. He had a point to make there, because in those days—we are talking about the 1970s—the girls were very sinless. There was no exposure to the media! So, he pestered me to get closer to the roots of Andhra Pradesh to show that purity. In a simpler language, he just asked me to tap into my younger self and to be as vulnerable as I could be. “Be flamboyant”, he said! Sometimes it was getting difficult for me to speak my dialogues in Telugu because I’m very new in this region, so the director was very helpful, or else I would have been clueless.”
Because it’s set in the 70s, we were waiting with bated breath to even know about the set-up, so she described in detail, “We were shooting in the Shamshabad area, and I was so surprised to see that the director has set up a whole village in the midst of that area, which was depicted with so much of reality. Because I went to villages in the northern part of our country, I could relate to them very well. It was in the middle of a forest! The film is not just about the real-life robber but also about the struggles that the villagers had to go through at the same time. Ravi Teja is playing the role of a saviour; this is how I would like to put it! I literally saw him surrendering to the emotions of the film. He looked like a Pakka villager! But the village setup was so good that we felt the happiest over there, in spite of knowing that it’s a copy of a village. With this kind of story, I forgot glamour life for a while and understood that real life is over here in villages. We don’t get to learn all of this in a metropolitan city; we are so busy with materialism.”
Here comes her try out story for her debut film, directly opposite a star like Ravi Teja. She recalled, “I have grown up listening to the stories of Veerappan. So, there was much spark inside me for doing this film based on a real-life robber already. The director saw me on YouTube! He said he saw my introductory scene over there and wanted to cast me in this film. I was floored to know that a Telugu director wants to cast me in such a big film opposite a superstar like Ravi Teja. This is the first time a director has shown me immense respect because, even though I love giving auditions, he showed some implicit trust in me as a debutant and just cast me right away without taking an audition. I am just waiting for Tiger Nageshwar Rao’s release because I want to go ahead with many more projects in Tollywood. This is my launching pad here! I am already feeling the butterflies in me.”
Going ahead with sharing her working experience with Ravi Teja, she elaborated, “For the very first time in my career, I was working with a superstar. His stature is something very different over here in the south. When he walks, he walks with a stardom along with him! He commands that presence whenever he is on set. Our daily routine was that he used to come in and just, you know, stand beside me, and I had to say my dialogues, and his presence used to intimidate me. Because he is a larger-than-life actor! Acting with him was hilariously difficult for me. But his acknowledgement meant a lot to me.”
Sharing bits and pieces about her first ever visit to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, she went on to say: “I can recall some memories from Vizag. I was there when the states were not bifurcated. I fell head over heels in love with the food of Andhra Pradesh. The cuisine of that state has a different place in my heart! The spicy curries and so many chutneys, uff! Biryani is a little overrated; I still haven’t eaten that biryani that I love so much.”
