On Koffee With Karan 9, the actor pushed back on years of accent criticism and explained why she insists on dubbing her own lines in every language she works in.
Rashmika Mandanna isn't interested in sanding down her accent to please anyone. Sitting across Karan Johar on Koffee With Karan Season 9, she was asked directly whether years of criticism over how she sounds in Hindi films ever got to her. Her answer was blunt.
"I particularly didn't have an issue with that because they said I had a South Indian accent, but I'm from the South of India. So I am going to have an accent," she said.
It's the kind of line that sounds obvious once said out loud, but Rashmika has clearly had to say it a lot. She told Karan that criticism has followed almost every part of her work since she started out, her acting, her language, her accent, take your pick. Rather than let any of it box her in, she went the other way entirely.
"So for me, I never wanted to sort of put a barrier for myself. I didn't want to just work in one industry. I wanted to work in them all. I didn't want to speak just one language. I wanted to speak all languages," she said, adding that the decision to work across film industries came early in her career, not after she'd already made it big in one.
That same stubbornness shows up in how she handles dubbing. Rashmika says she always offers her directors the option of bringing in another artist to dub over her voice in a language she isn't fully comfortable in. According to her, nobody's taken her up on it.
"But none of my directors actually wanted to dub with someone else. They wanted me to dub for myself," she said, calling it a point of pride despite the extra work it involves across multiple languages and multiple films.
The conversation also turned to the kind of roles she picks, and here she made her case with her own filmography. She pointed to Pushpa, The Girlfriend and Ananya as proof that she isn't chasing one type of part or one industry's idea of what she should be.
"So today, when I am a part of a brilliant film like Ananya, and The Girlfriend, it gives me great satisfaction as an actor, you know? Because I'm like, I'm able to play them all," she said.
None of this is new territory for Rashmika, who has spent the better part of a decade moving between Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Hindi projects while carrying the same voice into all of them. What's new is her saying it on a platform built for exactly this kind of unfiltered answer, with Karan Johar doing the asking and millions watching the episode do the rounds online.
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