HYDERABAD: After Anand and Godavari became blockbusters, everyone thought that she would be the next big thing in the industry. Her sky rocketing career didn’t take off at the pace her fans thought it would. With no regrets of where she is today, Kamalini Mukherjee is back with a whistle worthy performance in Nagavalli. She plays a mentally disturbed girl and looks a million bucks after she lost weight. She clarifies that she didn’t lose weight because she wanted to and not because any role demanded her to.
“It was just a wake up call and I realised I needed to be more fit. So I started working out. It is purely coincidental that my slimmer look worked for my character in Nagavalli, in which I play a mentally disturbed girl who is kept indoors for two years. Also when I started shooting for Nagavalli, I fell ill which actually worked wonders for the role.” she explains.
This Bengali bombshell rubbishes the rumours that she was not happy with the length of her role in Nagavalli. She says that her screen time in this movie is more than the same character in Kannada version. “I am happy with the time I got to be on screen in Nagavalli. In fact the director and the team worked on my character and added a song to it, which wasn’t the case in the Kannada version. I have done such brief roles in Happy Days and other movies. The duration of my role never bothered me as long as I got to perform and my presence has relevance to the story”
The actress was last seen in Maa Annaya Bangaram starring with Rajasekhar. While most of her contemporaries who are far less critically acclaimed choose to work with A-league stars, Kamalini is different. “For me, the script, my role and the director I am working with matter and not the co-star. The way I see it, the kind of roles I have played matters more than whom I am seen on-screen with. For me acting with Sharwanand or Venkatesh next to me is all the same,” Mukherjee says.
Her last few movies like Maa Annaya Bangaram and Bramhanandam Drama Company in Telugu went unnoticed. She says she doesn’t regret doing those films because she didn’t want to be typecast.
“In Maa Annaya Bangaram, I played the role of a timid spineless girl, something I haven’t done before. I am always in look out for roles I haven’t played before. I was being typecast and so I am glad I decided to come out of it and something unconventional. Otherwise it would have been boring for me and the audience too. The day acting bores me, I would venture into a new branch of cinema perhaps,” says the actress who keeps shuttling between Hyderabad and Mumbai.
She candidly admits that her staying in Mumbai might affect the volume of offers from Tollywood, but she believes in her work speaking for itself. “I am very reclusive and maintain a low profile. I am perpetually hiding. I know that by being in Hyderabad and attending events, being seen and getting clicked, I might get more offers. But I would like to stay in Mumbai because it gives me some personal space. I let my work speak for itself,” says the actress who is currently doing a film with Venu and has two more Telugu films in her kitty that will go on the floors in the next two months. She is also looking forward to doing her first Bengali movie which was to start shooting long ago.
Despite her goody-two-shoes image, she has had her share of controversy too. She was portrayed nude in the award-winning Malayalam film Kutty Shranku. Though she clarified that it wasn’t her but a body double, the number of hits on youtube to get a glimpse of her is on the rise. Did this controversy bother her?
“I am not a net savy person and so I didn’t pay attention to it initially. But my mom told me that it is doing the rounds on youtube now. It is an award winning cinema and I did a decent job but people are making an issue out of that 100 seconds visual. This episode has made me angry. When I wore a saree, a few said she only wears saree and can’t carry off western attire. When I wore modern outfits they said something else. People will forget all this soon and only a great movie called Kutty Shranku will be remembered,” she says confidently.