Rukmini Vasanth is having a moment. Fresh off Rishab Shetty‘s blockbuster “Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1,” the Indian actor has Yash‘s “Toxic” and a Prashanth Neel film with NTR Jr. on deck, and her approach is clear: women with agency who make decisive choices.
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduate, who gained recognition for her nuanced work in the critically acclaimed “Sapta Sagaradaache Ello” films (2023) opposite Rakshit Shetty, tells Variety that her performance as Kanakavathi in Rishab Shetty’s mythological prequel was carefully architected from the start.
Set centuries before the events of the 2022 sleeper hit, “Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1” follows the conflict over sacred forest land, with Vasanth’s character harboring secret ambitions that ultimately drive the narrative. The pivotal nature of her role was established from her first meeting with Shetty and his writing team of Anirudh Mahesh and Shanil Guru, with the character’s carefully concealed motivations and dramatic reveal integral to the film’s structure from the beginning.
“When Sir [Rishab Shetty] called me in for my first narration with him, and he told me upfront that this is all going to hinge on this girl’s sudden twist and the deep-held desire of hers to take over this land that she doesn’t reveal until the last moment,” Vasanth says. “That was very much planned, and that was something that I walked into fully aware of from the first meeting.”
The actor acknowledges the responsibility was daunting, particularly given the massive success of the first “Kantara” film. However, the prequel’s distinct historical setting and visual identity helped establish different audience expectations.
“From all the material that the film’s team had released, audiences were kind of prepared for the fact that this is a very different world that we’re going into,” she explains. “It’s not the same 1990s Kundapura that we had seen in the previous film. This is a very different world, and I think that leveling of the ground helped me because I didn’t feel as if people were expecting to see a certain kind of character.”
Bringing her London drama school training to bear, Vasanth discusses the challenge of calibrating performance style to match the scale of “Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1” while maintaining emotional authenticity – a marked departure from her breakthrough work in Hemanth M. Rao’s “Sapta Sagaradaache Ello” films, which she describes as prizing silence and spaces within dialogue and interaction.
“One of the beautiful things that I’ve been able to learn over my career is which style and where it belongs,” she says. “In the world of ‘Kantara: Chapter 1,’ some of the more restrained stuff can look too subtle to register because the scale is so large that you need to be able to match that scale.”
Vasanth uses a vivid analogy to explain her approach to calibrating performance. “You kind of need to regulate what is needed of you,” she says. “It’s like speaking – in a quiet living room, you can afford to whisper, but if you’re in the tube, you need to shout a little bit.”
Rukmini Vasanth – “Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1”
Hombale Films
The actor credits her disciplined approach to her background, with a father in the military and a mother who is a dancer. However, she emphasizes that her time at drama school was where she truly internalized the necessity of preparation and consistency.
“The discipline and preparation gives you the ability to show up regardless of what the outside variables may be,” Vasanth says. “You can’t really be too precious about the kinds of environments that you require in order to put out a good performance for a film that deserves that.”
She describes the challenging production conditions on “Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1,” with constant rain and limited shooting windows. “You’d have the crew members carrying these giant rigs up and down a hill. So at that point you can’t really be like, it doesn’t feel right to me. You just have to get on with it and do it as well as you possibly can.”
Looking at her filmography, Vasanth has gravitated toward characters who are emotionally decisive, even when constrained by circumstances. She attributes this pattern to what makes for compelling storytelling.
“Characters that make decisions, that may not be the right ones necessarily or the wrong ones, but that make decisions of some kind, and then that pulls the story along – I think I know what to do in those moments,” she says. “It’s just women with some sort of agency doing things.”
Vasanth’s upcoming projects include “The Elder One” director Geethu Mohandas’ highly anticipated “Toxic” opposite “K.G.F” star Yash, and a film with “Salaar” and “K.G.F” filmmaker Prashanth Neel featuring “RRR” lead NTR Jr.
Of “Toxic,” she says that it has challenged her in unprecedented ways. “It’s unlike anything that I’ve taken on before, which has equal doses of nerves to see how it unfolds,” she says. “The working style has been really, really fascinating and very different from anything I’ve encountered. The way that Yash Sir and Geethu approach this film, the scripts, the way that we’ve gone about shooting has been an incomparable experience for me.”
As for working with Neel and NTR Jr., she praises their continued enthusiasm for the craft. “It’s always very lovely when you work with people who come with such a strong body of work, but are very unencumbered by whatever that may have brought. You still see the sense of play and the sense of enjoyment.”
On the topic of pan-India casting, Vasanth suggests the label is more relevant to the commercial side of cinema than the creative. She points to historical precedents, including actor-director V. Ravichandran’s multi-industry production “Shanti Kranti” (1991).
“I think pan-India films have been happening. They’ve been attempted for a really long time,” she says. “Those are just labels and actors have been working across multiple industries all the time. We’re all very lucky that it’s successful and lucrative also now.”
Vasanth is now working across multiple South Indian film industries, with upcoming projects in Kannada, Tamil and Telugu cinema, representing a new generation of actors operating fluidly across linguistic markets. She declined to comment on reports of a collaboration with director Mani Ratnam.
