Rashmika Mandanna on Wedding Buzz With Vijay Deverakonda and Why She Avoids 'Work Talk' at Home

Rashmika Mandanna chooses to remain tight-lipped, especially on the subject everyone wants her to address. When asked if she would confirm or deny her rumoured marriage to Vijay Deverakonda, she chooses neither. “I wouldn’t like to do either; when it is to be spoken about, we shall,” she says with a smile.

That sense of control extends to how she manages her life at home. Though she openly calls herself a “workaholic,” Mandanna insists she does not want to bring the industry into her living room. “At least 80 per cent of the time, I don’t discuss work at home,” she says. If something in the business bothers her, she will ask for “advice or help,” but otherwise she shuts the door on it. “Talking about work is still work.”

This boundary is intentional. “I’m someone who will give my 100 per cent. When I have a meeting, I will give my 100 per cent. But when I’m home, I’m home,” she explains. With family, she draws a hard line. “I take my personal life extremely seriously. At home, I won’t talk about work. We can start that conversation tomorrow at 9am.”

She jokes about unwinding by watching Naruto, the impulse behind it being practical. “Otherwise you’re going to bed stimulated and waking up thinking I have so much to do. Where is the space to just be human?” The irony, she admits, is that work rarely respects personal rules. “We are actors and work doesn’t always leave us.”

Mandanna says she attempts to have a structure of twenty working days, with a couple of weekends off. “I plan everything properly,” she says. But the process of filmmaking rarely cooperates. “Somehow one film gets pushed, another gets pre-poned, meetings happen, rehearsals happen, and I end up doing double shifts.” She laughs at her own failed calendar. “My planning hasn’t been great.”