While Trisha hogged the limelight with her role in 96, directed by C Prem Kumar, the makers have chosen Bhavana to reprise the role of Janaki (the character Trisha played in the original) in Kannada.Bhavana said ‘yes’ to the role even before watching the original version. “I have known Ganesh from the time we worked in Romeo, and his wife Shilpa for a long time now. Since I am also aware that the combination of the actor and director Pretham Gubbi will work well, I decided to go ahead with the project. I watched the original film just three days ago, and I was impressed,” says Bhavana, who also admits that she hardly picked up remakes. Out of the 78 films she has done, she only remembers doing Yaare Koogadali (2012), in which she was paired opposite Puneeth Rajkumar.
“I have not attempted remakes either in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, either because of date issues or the story not appealing to me. I have been hesitant to take up remakes, especially reprising a role, which has already been appreciated,” says Bhavana, who currently has been part of Prajwal Devaraj-starrer
Inspector Vikram. “I guess with this project, everything fell in place, which is why I decided to take up,” she says.
Bhavana points out that the Tamil flick 96 does not have a “typical hero-heroine character”, and no glitz with songs, stunts. “It is like a summary of life, there’s nothing cinematic about. 96 just goes back in time to the 80s and 90s. It’s about two people falling for each other. Youngsters of this era don’t know the anticipation of a love letter. On the whole, the film takes all of us back to the era of waiting in college verandas and passing on messages through friends,” she says.
The film made under Ramu Enterprises will go on floors from December 17. They will be starting with the school portions, and Bhavana will join the sets in January.For the Kannada version, Preetham plans to retain the soul of the Tamil version, while giving it a slight twist. “As of now, I have no idea how my character will be placed. I was told it is not going to be an entire replica of the original,” she signs off.
I didn’t have any boys waiting for me at the veranda because it was an all girls’ school
Cinema took Bhavana off from school, and she dropped out in Class 10. “I couldn’t go to college because, at the age of 15, I started acting. It was all about travel, movies and stars,” says Bhavana, who says that having attended a convent school, there were no boys in the veranda waiting with love letters . “It was an all girl’s school and all we did was study,” she adds.