Showing posts with label Silk Smitha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silk Smitha. Show all posts
I’m not trying to recreate what Vidya Balan did in The Dirty Picture-Chandrika Ravi
10:28 AM
International model Chandrika Ravi insists she is offering her personal take with the Silk Smitha biopic, amid comparisons with The Dirty Picture
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; March 28, 2026)
A trailblazer is how international model and actor Chandrika Ravi views late Silk Smitha. For the past eight years, the Australia-born actor of Indian origin, has been developing a biopic on Smitha, who was one of the biggest sex symbols of South cinema in the 1980s. To her, the project feels personal. “She left an impact on many people like me. Much like Silk Smitha, my craving to be seen as desirable was gravely misunderstood in India,” Ravi told mid-day.
In 2018, Ravi made her Tamil film debut with Iruttu Araiyil Murattu Kuththu, and followed it up with several dance numbers. Despite her successful international modelling career, she hasn’t been able to break into the Indian film industry.
Drawing parallels between Smitha and her own journey, she reflected, “I can do justice to her story because I too know what it’s like to be an outsider and fight for recognition in an industry where it’s often who you know, not what you know [that matters].”
To be directed by Jayaram Sankaran, the biopic will roll later this year. Comparisons with Vidya Balan’s The Dirty Picture (2011) are inevitable. But Ravi is unperturbed.
“Every film’s take is different. What Vidya Balan did in The Dirty Picture was incredible, but I’m not trying to recreate that. My journey with Silk is personal, and I want to tell her story in my own way.”
Exciting that Diljit Dosanjh was putting out a song celebrating something I have been championing-Chandrika Ravi
2:41 PM
The desi face of Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS, Chandrika Ravi, talks brown beauty, rejection from India, reclaiming the tag of sex symbol and playing Silk Smitha in an upcoming biopic
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; March 15, 2026)
When Chandrika Ravi appeared in Diljit Dosanjh’s music video Saanvle, the word itself was evidently the message that both Ravi and Dosanjh were making. The title translates to “dusky”, which is an uncomfortable word that has existed in Indian beauty culture. In the video, Ravi stands exactly for every contradiction that the word offers. When she sits down for a conversation with Sunday mid-day, she starts with why the project felt personal.
“What got me the most excited about the project was that someone like Diljit, having the global impact he has, was putting a song out celebrating something I have been championing for as an Indian actress for years. The visibility, especially for young girls, that they are beautiful as they are and our brown skin should be celebrated was what I needed growing up.”
It is a simple idea, but for Ravi it has been a long fight. Long before she became a viral sensation or a global face of Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand SKIMS, Ravi was a young woman growing up outside Melbourne, convinced her future needed to be better. “I come from very humble beginnings. I was born in a small town outside of Melbourne to immigrant parents born in Singapore. But I had always told everyone around me that I was going to move to Los Angeles and be an actor, without knowing how or when I could do it,” she says.
Ravi had already been training in dance and acting since the age of three, but Australia’s film and television industry felt limited in ways she couldn’t ignore. “I was starting to feel a lot of discouragement in Australia because they simply weren’t writing parts for people of colour. I took the leap of faith and booked a ticket with whatever money I had, packed three suitcases and left for LA with USD 500 in my bank account and a dream. It’s the best decision I have ever made. I learnt resilience and determination as a person. As an artiste, I have trained with the best, and have learnt the ins-and-outs of the industry.”
But the journey toward confidence did not arrive without bruises. Some of the deepest ones came from the place she felt most connected to — India. “India broke me. It was essentially the Indian film industry that broke me as a person and performer. I was devastated,” she says.
The pain, she explains, was not about failure. It was about something far more difficult to accept. “It was a very hard concept to grasp that my talent wasn’t enough to be cast in something in India. That ultimately, the colour of my skin would dictate whether or not I got a part. Having trained my whole life on my craft, and having represented India and Indians on a global stage, it felt like I was constantly being rejected by my own people. I had to keep reminding myself that I had to keep fighting, not just to prove my worth, but for the other young boys and girls who grew up feeling like they too weren’t good enough because of colourism,” she says.
If Ravi speaks openly about rejection, she speaks just as openly about pride. “A constant reminder has been how much my skin colour and features are celebrated in America. I love when people ask me if I’ve come back from a vacation because my skin looks sun-kissed, but it’s my blessing of being born as an Indian woman.”
The larger point, she says, is about resisting a culture that constantly tells women they need fixing. She says, “In a world where women are especially picked apart and constantly made to feel like they have to be a certain way with beauty standards constantly changing, I am proud to still stand strong with my decision to not alter my appearance and embrace how God made me.”
In the age of paparazzi nicknames, Ravi has acquired one she finds both amusing and flattering: Chandrika Kardashian. The comparison emerged around the same time she became the first Indian woman associated with Kim Kardashian’s brand SKIMS. “It’s very flattering, I’ll take it!” she laughs, “She is confident, hot, and has great style!”
For Ravi, the irony isn’t lost. “Being associated with a name and a brand that is synonymous with being sexy — as an Indian woman sometimes does not feel real, especially when I was always told I was undesirable because I was so different.”
For her, being called desirable now feels like an inversion of the rejection she experienced earlier in life. She says, “Curves, long hair, strong features, and a glowing tan. Being called a sex symbol is a label I embrace with open arms. Being seen as desirable for being authentically myself in a country where I once fought to even have a seat at the table is a battle well fought. Being seen as desirable after being born in a Western country where I was told for years that I was not attractive enough to be in front of the camera means I became the representation I needed growing up of a confident, sexy Indian woman who was unapologetically herself.”
The next chapter of Ravi’s career may also be her most ambitious. She is currently co-creating and starring in the official biopic of cult screen icon Silk Smitha, popularized by Vidya Balan in The Dirty Picture [2011]. “What drew me to her story was how misunderstood she was,” she says, adding, “What she did, no one has ever been able to recreate. The command of attention she had with just a glance in your direction. The number of films she starred in less than two decades. The confidence she had to be seen as a sex symbol at a time where it was seen as taboo. The amount of turmoil she was facing in her personal life yet she was still able to have constant box office hits.” In many ways, reclaiming Silk Smitha’s story is also Ravi reclaiming her own.
I wasn’t Silk Smitha’s rival as shown in The Dirty Picture-Shakeela
8:13 AM
The South actress talks about how her character was misrepresented in the film inspired by the life of Silk Smitha...
Renuka Vyavahare (BOMBAY TIMES; February 2, 2019)
The upcoming biopic on South adult actress Shakeela, which features Richa Chadha in the lead, has been in the news for various reasons. While speaking to Bombay Times, the fiery actress revealed that the way her character was portrayed in Vidya Balan’s The Dirty Picture (2011; right) wasn’t accurate.Incidentally, Shakeela’s first commercial success (Play Girls, 1995) featured her alongside Silk Smitha (left). She played Smitha’s younger sister in the adult film. Talking about her equation with Silk Smitha and the way it was portrayed in the film, Shakeela clarified that they were not rivals as was shown, nor did she dethrone Smitha as the adult film sensation.
In an exclusive conversation, Shakeela revealed, “I just want to clarify one thing. There’s no truth to the scene in The Dirty Picture, where I am portrayed as an opponent or rival to Smitha. Whatever they wrote in the script, it’s their thing. I don’t want to comment on that, but this line where Silk asks a girl who plays Shakeela, ‘Toh tum shakeela ho? Tum kabhi Silk nahi ban sakti’, was not true at all. I wasn’t her rival. My first film was with her, where I played her younger sister. Uske baad she passed away so I was never competing with her.”
Shakeela joins Silk Smitha on screen
8:07 AM
Richa Chadha-starrer Shakeela biopic on South star will pay tribute to her now-deceased rival Silk Smitha
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; November 26, 2018)
Even though they may have been arch-rivals off screen, Shakeela and Silk Smitha, it appears, are set to be represented together in the same offering. The development stems from the decision of the makers of the Richa Chadha-starrer Shakeela biopic to pay tribute to Smitha in their film, given that the untimely demise of the latter, they claim, was responsible for the former's success.
Chadha tells mid-day of the South adult film actors, "Silk Smitha was an iconic name in the '90s. She created a genre and empowered women. Her films raked in a lot of money, and her popularity knew no bounds. Unfortunately, she had a tragic and untimely death, which led to the rise of Shakeela's popularity." The first poster of Chadha as Shakeela was unveiled recently, and the actor says that the look was inspired by a poster of Smitha's film, Miss Pamela.
"When the makers came across the iconic poster of Silk's film, they decided to pay homage to her. Had it not been for Silk, Shakeela wouldn't have enjoyed the popularity that she did." Director Indrajit Lankesh seconds Chadha's opinion, further adding, "Shakeela became a star, despite the constant attacks directed towards her. While Indian movies are being sold overseas now, her films were translated in 16 languages, including Chinese and Russian, at the peak of her career. But, Shakeela would not have become the star she is, if it wasn't for the tragic demise of Silk Smitha. Hence, [Chadha's] first look is a tribute to Silk."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)