It was not an easy job for the city-bred (read Bengaluru) leggy model Shaun Romy to portray the role of a colony inhabitant in Kammatipaadam. But full marks to her — she not only snagged attention with her acting prowess as the love interest of Dulquer Salmaan, but also went completely de-glam for the role. It looks like Shaun is looking forward to playing characters that are miles away from her comfort zone.
Like her role in the film Chandragiri, with Lal in the pivotal role. Shaun liked the story, her character even more, and felt it substantial enough to sign on the dotted line. It was not that the beautiful girl was not getting offers after Kammatipaadam.
She explains why she signed on for Chandragiri, “I play a physically challenged girl whose legs are paralysed and hence is bound to a wheelchair. But her physical limitation never comes in the way of her zest for life. She is an avid blogger, is active and wants to contribute to society. She wants to help out her father, played by Lal.” TURN TO PAGE 19
Shaun states that it was the strength of the character that drew her in. While sitting in the wheelchair afforded her a certain ease in acting viz a viz the body language, the flipside was that her facial expressions and hand gesticulations came under the camera scanner. “I had to pay attention to even small details and be careful with my expressions” she says.
Another aspect that Shaun found interesting was that unlike the clichéd boyfriend-girlfriend romance, here the attention was on the father-daughter relationship between Lal and herself. As a ramp and print model, Shaun has scorched the ramps and recently a photo of hers in a short top and sarong was doing the rounds on social media with the tag — ‘Shaun’s hot new avatar!’ Shaun is completely unperturbed and says, “It is a really old photo and I was years younger when I did that shoot. I really don’t understand why the photo has surfaced and is making the rounds now. I am aware of it but chose not to talk about it and thought it best to ignore it. “
Coming back to her career, Shaun will also be seen in a Telugu film Kadha about which she is all upbeat. She plays a 26-years-old Bengaluru girl and says, “I could relate to that character because it is similar to the real me. I had loads of fun playing the character and the crew and cast were also relatively young so I had a ball in the light-hearted film.” Though the language barrier was an impediment, she was lucky that she got an accommodating director, “The director was flexible about the language problem and even asked me to come up with my own dialogues.
So that was a new experience for me. In any case, I like learning new languages, so it was a learning process,” she says. Shaun has some criteria before signing, “I should have an equal importance in the film and my character should take the story forward.” She sighs and ends with this, “Also, I want to do happy roles in Malayalam.”
