Wannabe actor one moment, and one shot and one ‘action’ call later, a full-time actress. That’s how the charming Surabhi remembers how it all started, the journey towards her dream.
“All the effort seemed to have suddenly paid off,” she says, talking of how she memorised her lines a month before the actual shoot. She would write down the Tamil words in the English script, with their meanings alongside, and managed to come up with a system for effective lip synching. “I know I won’t be dubbing for my characters, but it’s about playing the role convincingly. I need to make that extra effort so that it looks spontaneous.”
Surabhi is sure that she doesn’t want to be typecast as the timid, innocent girl. “Who wouldn’t want to look glamorous on screen?” she asks. “Performance-oriented roles do matter, but those rarely come with a glamour quotient. So it’s about balancing both,” she says.
In Pugazh , she plays an aggressive, belligerent girl. Considering it’s Jai opposite her, will she dominate him, as has happened in his roles in recent films? “Yes! In the first half, I boss over Jai. As the story progresses, I become more caring and kind. It’s a fun character to play,” she says.
Surabhi, who dabbled in comedy in Ivan Veramathiri, had the crew in splits while shooting for Pugazh . “ “I had to shout at an old lady. They said the shot would be a fast forward scene, where they would bleep what I said. So I grabbed the chance to return to my North Indian roots and blasted her in Hindi, very unladylike,” she laughs.
