Why Radhika picked action over romance

Radhika Madan would have had a different Bollywood story to narrate had she not been spotted by director Vasan Bala’s team for his upcoming action comedy while she was all set to audition for Laila Majnu.

The actor went to audition for the Imtiaz Ali-backed modern day re-telling of the epic romance. But, as fate would have it, she was instead zeroed in as a feisty martial artist in the other film, also starring Abhimanyu Dassani.

“For Laila Majnu, I was pretty excited because I thought I would get to be Laila in my debut film which will be shot in Kashmir. And here, there was this action film script, a genre which I’ve never liked,” Radhika recalls. “But something inside me knew I had to do this. I knew Laila Majnu in that sense was conventional, I’d look a certain way, it’ll be treated in a certain way but there was so much of uniqueness to this film, I said chuck everything — I’m doing this one,” she adds.

Called Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, the film tells the story of a young man born without pain receptors who longs to defeat 100 opponents in a kumite tournament. Radhika will be seen doing heavy-duty martial arts sequences in the film, and her preparation involved watching film after film from the martial arts movie genre, and psychological conditioning.

“Apart from having a strict diet and a daily routine of exercises, we were asked to stay calm from within. There was a lot of mental training involved as well. A character like this can be taxing but that’s the beauty of the film. It was such a new experience,” she shares.

PHOTO: YOGEN SHAH Radhika Madan plays a feisty martial artist in an upcoming action comedy