Rashmika Mandanna on Why Sustaining Success is Harder for Women Than Men

Rashmika Mandanna believes that the real test for women in cinema begins not when they arrive, but when the excitement around their arrival fades. “For women, the battle truly begins once people are used to you,” she says in an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter India. On paper, new faces generate curiosity, but she insists that curiosity is fleeting. “Your face and just you being on screen is like, oh, she’s someone new. It’s exciting.” But sustaining that attention, she argues, is where things get challenging.

She chooses her words carefully, emphasising that she can only speak from her own experience. Still, the pattern she describes is familiar — age, looks, and novelty are examined far more closely when it comes to actresses. “People know how you perform, how you talk, how you behave. Once people get used to you, the battle begins. You need to keep the interest up,” she says.

That interest, she explains, requires constant reinvention. “You need to give your audience something new to see. You need to surprise them.” 

The comparison with men is inevitable. “When a man comes and says I can perform, people are like, 'Okay, let’s see what this guy can do,'” she says. The audience, she believes, does not invest in their novelty but in their potential. Once a male actor proves he can be “a hero”, as someone who can command the screen, that loyalty, she says, remains strong. “Once the audience has a man’s heart, they have it for life.”

Women, in contrast, have to prove themselves to win this trust, she observes. “It feels like they can support seven different actresses while supporting one male actor,” she says. 

She agrees when asked if women must therefore work twice as hard. “Yeah,” she says, before adding, “I’ve not been a man, so I don’t know. But as closely as I’ve seen, this is it.”

Watch our full interview with Rashmika Mandanna dropping later today on our YouTube channel