Shamna Kasim danced through her second pregnancy without telling a soul on set, and she only found out herself midway through the shoot.

The actress features in Ala Bolelo, the special song from Rajinikanth's Jailer 2 that's currently doing big numbers online, choreographed to Anirudh Ravichander's music and directed by Nelson Dilipkumar. She tells Filmfare she shot for four days in July 2025. Two days in, the dizziness started.

"We went for a checkup, and doctors confirmed my second pregnancy," she recalls. She says she didn't mention it to anyone on set, wanting to keep the mood on the floor exactly as it was. Three days after that hospital visit, she left for Karnataka to finish patchwork scenes for Balakrishna's Akhanda 2, five days of work she pushed through while keeping the pregnancy to herself there too.

Nelson cast her for Ala Bolelo after watching her moves in Kurchi Madathapetti, the song that made her a talking point last time round. "He told me that my dance moves... Were graceful and said that I need to recreate the magic," she says. Add Rajinikanth's name to the credits and there wasn't much room to say no. "It was too good an offer to resist."

Meeting the Superstar came with its own moment. Shamna says Rajinikanth told her she has expressive eyes, and she was, in her own words, left speechless.

There's a neat bit of timeline math she points out herself. When she shot Kurchi Madathapetti, her son was three months old, and she was running between the set and a vanity van to feed him between takes. Ala Bolelo came while she was in her first trimester with her second child. "So, both the babies gave me two blockbuster songs," she says.

More than two decades into a South film career that's moved between lead roles, supporting parts and dance numbers, Shamna says she's turned down plenty of hit songs over the years, and it's never been about typecasting. It's the costumes. She says her body doesn't sit well with certain kinds of wardrobe, and she'd rather a song look good on screen than tick a glamour box.

"I am someone who enjoys grooving in sarees," she says, adding that she's walked away from big offers on that basis alone and hasn't looked back. "It's okay, I don't have any regrets."

Jailer 2 is currently riding the wave of Ala Bolelo's reception, with Nelson and Rajinikanth's film headed toward its next update on release specifics. Whether that comes with a fresh trailer drop or a date announcement is the thing to watch now.