Juggling South and Hindi cinema

You’re an actress who successfully juggles Telugu, Tamil and Hindi roles. How much of a challenge is that and with the success of panindian films like Baahubali and RRR, do you hope cinema becomes more integrated in the future?

You can’t be doing as many films in every industry because there are only 365 days in a year. When I was working only in Telugu (cinema), I was doing about four or five films a year. And then Tamil happened, and it sort of split into two-three films. And then when Hindi happened, it was like, one each. The last two years have been more Hindi (cinema), because I shot for 6-7 films.

It does become very difficult to juggle because both industries work very differently when it comes to specifically assigning dates for a project. Here in Hindi we take bulk dates, say three months, for one film. But in Telugu or in the South, it’s generally scattered. So you have to decide what is your main area of play, which for me right now is this new space that I am enjoying.

Coming to the second part where cinema has become integrated and the boundaries have blurred, I think it’s amazing. If films from every region start coming together we can create some world-class cinema because of such rich culture and cinematic history. So I think it’s beautiful if all the industries come together and create Indian cinema; I like that word better than pan-indian. There’s nothing better than seeing every film flourish.