Tamannaah Bhatia is phoenix-like Madhuri Dixit, an actress she has idolised and admired since childhood. Like Dixit, Tamannaah has reinvented herself time and again but across the various film industries of India—be it Telugu, Tamil to Hindi. She is hugely popular among Dubai audiences, with some of her songs such as Aaj ki Raat a hit even among kids.
The interview was conducted before the actor greeted the massive crowds at the Deira City Centre for Dubai Tourism’s Festival of Lights.
So, is she a regular Dubai visitor? Tamannaah doesn’t remember her first trip to Dubai since it was years ago but she recalls a song and dance sequence. “During my first trip here, I was in my early twenties and it was a shoot at some street I remember.”
Attracted to song and dance early on, in her career, Tamannaah has several numbers to her credit. Her dances include the foot tapping Kaavalaa with Rajinikanth from Jailer and other noted songs from Southern cinema. She also appeared in the well known Ghafoor song from the Aryan Khan directed web series Ba…ds of Bollywood.
“Madhuri ma’am is someone I have always looked up to,” she says. What is striking about Madhuri according to Tamannaah is that she has various peaks to her success and that, “she continues to peak even now”.
“She is a very graceful lady and I love the way she conducts her career today. She redefines herself time and again and each time she reinvents herself, she is awesome and inspiring. Gone are the days when the 20’s was considered your peak. Madhuri ma’am rises time and again be it television, films or web serials and that is inspirational to me. There is no timeline to her career,” she adds.
Ease with languages
How many languages does she actually speak considering she works across different industries ? “I speak Tamil, Telugu, English, Hindi and Sindhi,” says Tamannah and speaks a few words in Tamil during the interview.
What were the advantages of starting young? Tamannaah started her film career at the age of 15. “There are advantages to starting young—you get a lot more chances to make mistakes. (Laughs). When you are younger you get more opportunities to mess up. So you learn better by correcting your flaws and in turn, perfecting your craft.”
She finds the industry changing for the better in terms of the content it is creating today because there are changes in society. For instance, today there is an awareness of body positivity as against the archaic body shaming practice. “Body positivity is not just in the industry, it is everywhere in society. This generation is aware and sensitive and thanks to social media it is spreading and making people aware and accepting of all body types. There is a lot of conversation around it, hence awareness and all that is reflected in the works of certain film makers.”
“People are genuinely trying to be sensitive. A far cry from the time when the first thing people would comment about you was your weight or how you looked,” she adds.
Of sensitivity and thick skin
What about trolling and hurtful comments? Does she get affected and how does she deal with it? “As actors we are caught in a weird dichotomy. We want to be transparent and put a raw and bare side of ourselves to the audience. At the same time we don’t want to get hurt. I have spent enough time in the industry to understand and know that everything is not meant to be absorbed. So you have to let a lot of things go. A lot of faceless people troll you and you cannot get bullied by people you don’t know. You have to be thick-skinned and sensitive at the same time.”
With a large repertoire of films, including Baahubali, which is internationally praised, she is choosy about her future roles. “Audiences are evolving everyday and it is important to give people something worth their while. If something excites me I hope it will excite them too. So yes, I choose my roles with care and caution.”
How does she usually spend Diwali? “It starts with a Laxmi puja at home and then at the office. We make a kada prasad that I particularly like. It tastes better during Diwali.”
Source: Khaleej Times