Actress Sri Reddy’s protest and nude show before the office of Movie Artists Association, raised a big question, “Where are the Telugu girls?” Are they really bring ignored? Or are there is a lack of suitable talent? Director Trinadha Rao Nakkina blamed it on the theatre scene. He said, “In Mumbai Theatres and Drama provide enough number of options and we have people coming in with talent and ready to take up roles there. Here we don’t have such wide variety.”
Vinay Varma from Telugu Theatre group countered this argument. He said, “Theatre scene in Telugu is highly active and if anyone says it is not, then they are ignorant. Unfortunately, not many really look to come to theatres and theatre groups bend over backward to please them. This results in shortchange behavior if filmmakers and no one really gets a good chance.” Sudheer Verma the director said, “We are so accustomed to casting people from outside that if we choose anyone from Telugu, the mood in the camp is not uplifted. This has been going on from 80’s and we can’t change it suddenly.”
Hanu Raghavapudi said, “Finding a good suitable actress for quirky characters is a huge job. We have to spend months and months to find the perfect one. It took me four months to rope in Mehreen for Krishna gadi veera prema gatha.” Lastly, Naga Shaurya said, “We have fixed budgets and time limits. But things don’t go as fast as we want them to. Hence, we have to take time. Nurturing someone who is not ready doesn’t really help a film’s production cost. That will also factor in selecting a suitable actress.” So, the new breed of filmmakers say they don’t have any bias in taking a Hindi actress over a Telugu actress but they are not finding the suitable one.
