Shruti Haasan is part of Tigmanshu Dhulia's Yaara, that has dropped on Zee5 on 30 July. Yaara is a licensed adaptation of the French film A Gang Story and has friendship at its core. It also stars Vidyut Jammwal, Amit Sadh, Vijay Verma and Kenny Basumatry.
Shruti speaks to The Quint about her role in Yaara and opens up about how getting her first film was easy but it came with its own share of struggles.
Your fans on social media are celebrating 11 years of you in the industry. Was it hard though coming from a film family? And you had seen your father as a superstar, were there things that you were told that these are the set rules and this is how you should be and was it a process to unlearn?
There were no set rules that I was told. I probably should have been told more rules. But I wasn’t. One day I just signed a movie and told my dad, “Oh I am doing a movie by the way,” and he had no idea I was going to do that. It was very random. So he was like, “Well, work hard,” and that was like the tiny bit of advice I got. I didn’t have those expectations in my head and neither did he put it nor my mum. So it was a very organic journey.
If I may ask, how did the first film come to you? Was it easy? Was it something that you wanted to do to begin with?
No, actually when I was very young I wanted to be an actress and then I kind of let that go. I started writing and making music and my dad was the one who said you know you should consider acting at some point and I was like…really. I never took it seriously. It wasn’t something that I thought about as a plan. So yes, in that sense, especially with all the debate and conversation going around now, it would be untrue if I said it was really difficult to get in. It was very easy for people to be interested in me in the beginning because of my surname. But I wasn’t very good in my first film and I wasn’t attuned to what it means to be an actor and the journey after that was really hard and challenging for me personally because I had to make changes and adjustments to my approach to life to be able to succeed in films.
Was it difficult just being you? To me, you come across as someone who speaks her mind, likes to carry herself the way she wants. Was it difficult doing just that…and trying to please people? That’s what we hear from actors that they have done that and then…
I have enjoyed myself 90 per cent of the times. But I have always felt that the ten per cent of times when I didn’t enjoy myself. It was like in any job…the misunderstandings and the miscommunication. It became a constant battle to be “I need to be who I am.” And when I am on the sets, I need to be this person who you need me to be and then I will be me. And then I realised after taking a break that it doesn’t need to be so black and white. I have learned that I have nothing to prove about who I am. I am like, “Oh, I have been here eleven years.” And I think today I am much easier and much happier with who I am.
Watch the video to find out more.
Video Editor: Ashish Maccune
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