Mrunal Thakur On Finding Recognition Outside Hindi Cinema: 'Maybe I was Not Ready Before; I Am Absolutely Ready Now'

The upcoming action-drama Dacoit starring Mrunal Thakur and Adivi Sesh with Anurag Kashyap was shot in Hindi and Telugu simultaneously over 149 days. Two respective bound scripts were used in order to capture the specific linguistic rhythms.

Thakur hails from Maharashtra and got her Bollywood debut with the 2018 film Love Sonia, has since done three Telugu films, including the blockbuster Sita Ramam (2022), and gained a lot of momentum outside of mainstream Hindi cinema. When asked if there's a reason behind Hindi directors not casting her in diverse roles, she noted that she has been climbing the ladder one step at a time. "Maybe I was not ready then. I am absolutely ready now," she said. She further shared that she has started getting roles that are written for her. “A director saying I have written this script thinking of you in my mind is my biggest award,” she remarked.

"The first Telugu movie I did, Sita Raman, became a blockbuster and I found recognition in the South. That's how I got accepted universally," she added.

Shooting Dacoit in both Hindi and Telugu was a unique experience for her. For the actress, who is not fluent in Telugu, the Hindi takes functioned as a rehearsal. In an exclusive conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India, she shared, “I would want to rehearse the scene in Hindi first but the best thing is we were shooting those scenes, so there were points where we would improvise and because of that the Telugu scene would even become better.”

The environment of the set became what Sesh calls “an unsaid competition between languages” with him being most comfortable in Telugu, Thakur and Kashyap being new to the language and the director Shaneil Deo, who is Indo-Fijian, and speaks a mix of all these languages. He shared that they would constantly do re-takes if a scene in Telugu came out better in Hindi or vice versa.

Their technical approach emphasised the sensibilities of each language. Sesh's character in the Telugu version hails from Madanapalle which brought a contrast to the story compared to the Hindi version. The method ensured that the story was adapting to the expectations of two different audiences rather than a static translation.

Watch our full interview with Adivi Sesh and Mrunal Thakur, dropping later today on The Hollywood Reporter India's YouTube channel.