The Chennai Express song, One Two Three Four Get on the Dance Floor, featuring actor Priyamani had become quite the rage in 2013. But we didn’t see her going all out in taking up Hindi projects after that. In fact, The Family Man was her next Hindi outing, six years later.

Ask her about it and she says she was “never away” from Hindi cinema to begin with. “I have grown up watching those films, actors like Aamir (Khan), Shah Rukh (Khan), Salman (Khan)... I was born and brought up in Bengaluru, and watched both English and Hindi films. I just took my time to proudly enter this (Hindi) industry,” says Priyamani, who has done films in multiple south Indian languages.

The problem, she says, lay in the kind of image that was being formed of her after Chennai Express. The National Film Award-winning actor elaborates, “Hindi cinema has a wider, pan-India audience. The NRI audience also watches a lot of it. I am glad I started my journey (in Bollywood) with Raavan in 2010, then Rakta Charitra (2010), followed by Chennai Express. After that, I wanted to take a break as I’d keep getting a lot of offers for doing similar numbers. I didn’t want to be like that. Then came The Family Man, and the rest is history.”

Maidaan is the 37-year-old’s next release, alongside actor Ajay Devgn, which has been pushed till now to ensure a theatrical release. And with people back in cinemas, does she think that the craze for web content will go down? “No, I don’t think so. Web will have its full fan following even after this. This craze for OTT platforms will never die down,” she signs off.