Kumki could have been the film that would have introduced actor Lakshmi Menon to Tamil film audiences. But Sundarapandian, which she bagged after completing the shoot for Kumki, released ahead of time, becoming her first Tamil flick
“Only after seeing me in Kumki photographs, director Prabhakaran chose me for Sundarapandian. It got wrapped up pretty fast,” she says. It doesn’t matter for Lakshmi which film released first as she says both are her’s. “For Kumki too, we shot only for 80 days. But, we waited for different seasons to shoot in and the graphics work took their due time,” she says.
Menon has already done two Malayalam flicks and director Prabhu Solomon noticed her in one of them before auditioning her for Kumki. Menon, who played a simple village girl in Sundarapandian, says she didn’t have to do much homework for Kumki as well. “I just did what Prabhu sir asked me to at the shooting spot because you never know much about tribal people. Shooting for Kumki was not easy. Even reaching the shooting locales was very tough, but I enjoyed it on the whole,” says the 16-year-old actor.
Coming from Kerala, Lakshmi speaks Tamil fluently as her mother was in Chennai learning Bharathanatyam at Kalakshetra. Though Lakshmi aspired to become an IAS officer, her family’s inclination towards arts made her enter films. Menon is currently shooting for Kuttipuli, in which she has paired with Sasikumar again. The actor feels she has time to experiment with a variety of characters and wants to keep the homely girl image for a few more films.