Director Saravanan, who is helming Puneeth Rajkumar’s 25th film, had to make a crucial last-minute decision related to the leading lady of his ambitious project. Having zeroed in on Sonam Bajwa, the director realised much later that she was not suited for the role that his character demanded.
According to the director, it was only after Sonam Bajwa landed in Bengaluru and did a couple of scenes that the director realised that she didn’t have a suitably South Indian look which was necessary for the character. “She is too tall and her hair is brown, which was not suitable for the role. More importantly, emoting in Kannada was becoming tough for her which I realised while she tried rehearsing the lines. So I had no option but to replace her with another heroine,” he explained.
Now, Tamil actress Pallavi Subhash has been selected for the role, who was one of the options considered by Saravanan. “I have watched her in ads and serials and felt she was the next best choice. We immediately brought her down to Bengaluru, did the screen test and immediately signed her on. All this happened in a matter of two days,” he said.
Pallavi is currently making her Tamil debut in Achcham Enbadhu Madamaiyada written and directed by Gautham Menon and she is paired opposite Silambarasan. A Maharashtrian model-turned-actress, Pallavi has been part of more than a dozen Marathi films, commercials, Hindi soap operas and plays.
She is popularly known for the role of Gauri in the prime-time TV soap Karam Apnaa Apnaa and the character Rukmini in the mythological series Mahabharata. The actress is currently a part of the historic series Chakravarti Ashoka Samrat.