Raveena Tandon was to star in KGF 1, too!
Actor Raveena Tandon made her last full-fledged appearance on screen with Shab (2017). And since then, her fans were left speculating about when she would give her nod to a big screen outing. KGF 2 is now set to finally end that break.
However, this isn’t her first Kannada project. “My debut [in Kannada films] was Upendra (1999), a cult film opposite Upendra (actor, director). KGF 2 will be my second. I had signed one earlier, opposite Ravichandran (actor), which didn’t take off,” she says.
The Yash-starrer released its teaser recently, and it was enough to make her fans go crazy on the internet, despite just a two-second appearance. Tandon reveals that she was actually set to be seen in KGF 1 as well.
“At that point, the story of KGF 2, especially my character, had not developed fully. If I had done the first part, and it didn’t turn out as well in the second part, it would have been dicey. They agreed to use my body double, and left the decision to me. I saw the first part when it was complete, and I was like, ‘Oh my God! This is phenomenal’. It was edgy, new-age cinema,” gushes the actor.
Tandon, in a three-decadelong career, has also done films in Telugu and Tamil. How did this Mumbai girl go about learning the languages? She says, “It’s not that I was very fluent, we had help. Then, we had to mug up scenes and practise, it was almost like giving an exam! You need to be stressed, remember lines and express at the same time. I find a couple of languages easy, like Tamil and Telugu. I was getting the hang of Kannada while I was there, Malayalam is close to Sanskrit... it was tough.”
A fan of films made in southern languages, the actor says there was a time when Hindi films weren’t delivering much and films in the South made noise. “There was a time when the Hindi film industry was grappling between good storylines, they were trying to cater to or copy from the West, becoming too westernised for the masses. There was a phase in the late ’80s and mid ’90s when I felt we were losing that grip. That’s when I saw a couple of films made in the South, which were still catering to their regional senses and inte- riors. Heartland is the right word. When a couple of good films were narrated to me, I jumped at the opportunity.”