BENGALURU: Unconventional has been the go-to word for Sruthi Hariharan who picks and chooses her roles with much care. The actor is now making a comeback with Tamil series Vadham on MX Player, where she plays the role of a woman cop. With a low-key OTT release, the 10-episode series also stars Ashwathy Warrier and Semmalar Annam. But what pushed Hariharan to pick the project? “It’s about stories of real-life policewomen who balance their personal life and professional life very carefully.
What hit me was that in cinema, there are cops who are projected as larger than life characters, but in Vadham, they are portrayed in a relatable manner,” says Hariharan, adding that the difference between this series and something like Delhi Crime on Netflix is the director- Venkatesh Babu, who is working on making the series enjoy a mass appeal.
Sharing trivia about it, Hariharan says the series was shot in 2018, way before her pregnancy with only a few sequences shot during her first trimester. About being compared to Gal Gadot who shot Wonder Wonder while being heavily pregnant, Hariharan laughs and says, “I don’t know about that but I think it’s all about commitment. An entire team is riding on you and it was important to show up and do your best.”
Shwetha from Lucia, Asha in Urvi or Gowri in Nathicharami, the actor has wooed the audience in most of her roles. Ask her if she will be seen doing commercial roles, and it’s a clear ‘no’. “I am now older and wiser. I want to do more than just dance around trees. They need younger girls for that. I would love to do commercial films where the character goes beyond being a love interest to a star,” says Hariharan, who likes series and movies with strong female protagonists. “OTT gives a lot of liberty to filmmakers to experiment with subjects,” she adds.
While fans have surely missed the actor on silver screen, Hariharan is busy enjoying motherhood with her one-and-half-year-old daughter keeping her on her toes. But she is coming back to the big screen with a Kannada movie soon, which is yet to be titled.
Hariharan stirred up headlines in 2018 when she became one of the first whistleblowers in Sandalwood for the #MeToo movement. She had accused actor Arjun Sarja of sexual misconduct. When journalist Priya Ramani recently won a defamation case filed by former editor and politician MJ Akbar, the win was nothing less of an emotional one for her too.
“I have followed her case closely. I did consider it to be a personal victory of mine too. As Priya mentions, her case of sexual harassment was not as serious as many others out there. As was the case with mine. It was not as serious as an abuse or rape case. However, the point is to have a conversation. The point is to call out this behaviour. It is a fight against the system,” says Hariharan.