Shreejaya Nair
Actress Priyamani has been a regular presence among Keralites the past year, thanks to her stint as a jury member for dance reality show D2-D4 Dance. However, it has been a long time since we saw her on the big screen.
She will soon be back to Mollywood with her new Malayalam project Silent Radio all geared up for shoot. “I’m working with Asif Ali for the first time and the shoot of the film is scheduled for February,” says Priyamani.
The Kalavoor Ravikumar film will see Asif in the role of an introvert radio mechanic and Priyamani as a medical transcriptionist five years older to him. The film revolves around the relationship between the two characters.
“Apart from that, the shoot of D3 will also start in March. Nowadays, television has taken over big time and I’m really enjoying my stints there. I have even signed up as a judge for a Tamil dance reality show which will start soon,” says the actress.
Since she has not been very active in Malayalam recently, rumours have been rife about her losing currency as many of her recent projects bombed at the box office.
In fact, many even suggested that Prakash Raj had offered her a role in his Kannada directorial to help her get back in the game.
The actress rubbishes the claims. “I don’t know where these rumours come from. Every second or third day I’m getting calls from people with new projects, asking me to listen to stories. But I don’t want to do just any other project. There should be some zing to it; something new. Basically, I should feel at the end of the day that I am doing something worthwhile. Until now, I haven’t been offered any roles without substance and most come to me saying they have a ‘performance-oriented role’. If people have to come to me with such roles, then there must be some trust they have in my skills, right,” she asks.
Priyamani has also been very active in Kannada film industry. “My latest Kannada release, which came out just a few weeks ago, did really well here and I have three more upcoming releases in Kannada. One is Yogaraj Bhat’s Dana Kayonu in which I play a typical de-glam tomboy character, who wants to join the police force and become a constable like her father. When the hero tries to profess his love for her, she keeps insulting him with stuff like ‘Just go look at your face’ and so on. My character has a lot of different shades in the movie and the film has comic elements throughout. The second film is Kalpana 2 - a remake of Kanchana 2. Finally, I have Prakash Raj sir’s directorial which is being simultaneously shot in Kannada and Telugu. It is sort of like a remake of Shutter, but he has changed things to suit the culture of the Kannada and Telugu audience.”
However, her most interesting stint in Kannada is her debut as a singer through Devravne Budu Guru. “I have not sung the entire song. I have only sung the second charanam and the end pallavi. Coming from a family of singers, everyone from my mother’s side being musically inclined, I feel that I’m musically inclined too. Though I have only attended a few classical music classes and never pursued it fully, I felt there was nothing wrong in trying it out. I hope my granny is proud of me!” she chirps.
Ask her about her dream role and pat comes the reply, “Comedy! I want to do a full on comedy, like Rohit Shetty’s Golmaal series. I think it’s quite difficult to do. I also want to do a full on negative character. We have very few female comedians and villains. The only strong female villain I can think of is Ramya Krishnan in Padayappa. She had a phenomenal role, on par with Rajnikanth, and she did it full justice to it. In comedy, you have people like Kovai Sarala and Aarthi nowadays, but people still prefer the popular comedian actors to these ladies I think.”
