Kaantha press: "the slap was the slap"
In an extended interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, Bhagyashri unpacks playing Kumari opposite Dulquer Salmaan — and the take that everyone was talking about.
She describes Kumari as a butterfly — "calm, sophisticated, innocent" — set against Dulquer's TK Mahadevan, in 1950s Madras. On the slap scene with Dulquer, she's blunt: "I was not ready to do it because I'd never had to hit anybody. But DQ really wanted that real expression. I had to do what my co-actor wanted." Selvamani Selvaraj's brief to her: "He wanted Kumari to come out as a better actor than TK in places — because he is insecure about her."