Rashmika Mandanna on 'Animal', 'The Girlfriend' and Social Responsibility: 'I Don’t Like Typecasting Myself'

What social responsibility does an actor owe the audience? Rashmika Mandanna explains how she sees this lens, having worked on two films with contrasting themes: Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Animal and Rahul Ravindran's The Girlfriend. “It depends on each project,” she tells THR India in an interview. “I don’t like typecasting myself, and I don’t like creating these boundaries for myself.”

Mandanna views Animal and The Girlfriend as two different films. “Animal was a commercial film where we spoke about a very flawed man,” she says. “The Girlfriend is about Bhooma [the main character in the film] working on herself, and she happens to be in a toxic relationship. This is a social messaging.” For her, both stories should exist because both reflect realities she wants to express. “This is storytelling. This is what I want to tell you from my heart.”

She defends her characters from simplification. Even in Animal, she insists that her character, Geetanjali was not submissive. “She gave it back to Ranvijay [her husband in the film, played by Ranbir Kapoor]. She stood her ground,” says Mandanna. Across her filmography, she believes this thread holds. “I’ve always chosen to do strong female characters. Except one film, I think, never have I been purely ornamental,” she says. Be it through Telugu films such as Geetha Govindam and Pushpa, or Hindi counterparts like Animal or Chhava, she has played women who know what they want and assert themselves.

In The Girlfriend, the character's strength is internal. “It is her versus her, her journey into becoming a strong woman,” she says. "Animal and The Girlfriend are two different films with two different kinds of storytelling and messaging. I'd like to keep it at that."

Rashmika will next be seen in Mysaa, in a fierce, action-leaning role. A new poster from the film was recently released to reiterate the character's tenor.