Lakshmi Manchu, in an exclusive tête-à-tête with Cutting Shots, shows us why she stands out from the crowd.
“The world’s prerogative is to say no. How you are going to say yes to yourself is only up to you,” Lakshmi Manchu tells me when I ask her about how she sails through opinions and judgements that crosses her way. As someone who believes that being yourself is the most real thing, expect no sugar-coated confessions here!
Excerpts-
Q. After completing your UG in acting, you moved to LA to sharpen your skills further at Beverley Hills Playschool, where you believe you met the most amazing teachers. You said that just living in LA was a life-changing experience for you. Like most aspiring actors, you took whatever was required to sustain yourself. You ‘waited tables, worked in donut stores’ on the side while you were auditioning for roles there. What is the biggest lesson that you continue to carry from those days?
A. That dreams do not have expiration date, nor as an artist, do you have a timeline. Because when I was in India, a female actress had a very limited timeline for how long she could act. And when I went there, and when I was in acting classes, they were all age groups, all sizes, all kinds of people that I got to meet, which you don’t get to hear. You know, here 90% of the people look the same, and then another 10% maybe, you know, different looking people. So for me, it was a real eye opener. It felt like the world is a big oyster, and that you don’t have to limit your thinking that I only have a certain amount of time, or I need to look a certain way.
Q. Generally you have actors/actresses working here first and then setting their sights on Hollywood. But in your case, it was vice versa. You started your career with a string of international shows (Las Vegas, Boston Legal, Mystery ER, Desperate Housewives), and then made your debut in your homeland with a Telugu film, Anaganaga O Dheerudu. That too, in the role of an antagonist. Was it a conscious decision from your end not to be a cookie cutter and play safe?
A. Yes, because I never thought I would be given an opportunity in India. Hollywood was easier than being in India. So it was absolutely a conscious decision not be a cookie cutter. I wanted to be an artist wherever that meant, and however hard that meant for me to work. So I went to America where it was easier for me to penetrate through that market, because I didn’t have a tagline of that I cannot do.
Q. Of course, now you have a substantial body of work to your credit so people know that whenever you come on screen, you bring something edgy or out of the box. But back in your early years, did you had to deal with the pressure of having a famous father’s legacy, and people trying to fit you into a box?
A. I always say, you guys are a square, and I’m a circle. I’m never going to fit in (laughs). There’s nothing wrong with either or. That’s a challenge. You know, early on, it was tough. And yes, they want to do the same thing. If I do one role, and you know, very modestly, I’m saying I kick it out of the park, and then they come back to me with the same kind of roles. I get bored very quickly. I like starting things up. I like people following what I do. And I like to come up with something nobody’s seen or heard or done before.
Q. You are someone who has never shied away from stepping out of your comfort zone, and you always approach things with confidence. In an actor’s process, how important is the ‘sense of fear’? When I say that, I mean the kind of fear that makes sure that you remain aware and focused on your craft.
A. I think every actor takes risks to make it. Each one of us lives in a sense of insecurity, if we have enough or not. Somebody’s taller, somebody’s prettier, somebody’s thinner, somebody’s got more body of work. So there is a constant, even if the world doesn’t compare you, you as an artist are comparing yourself, you know? I mean, I’m comparing myself to it. I’m like, how the heck did she do that? So unless you walk in with confidence, people can smell your fear. There is no one without fear. If you lead with your fear, you’re only going to fail. But if you lead with confidence, there are chances that you may win.
Q. In one of your interviews, you said that if you are asked to choose from being a host, actor, producer or director, it can never be one thing that you want to do. You were very vocal about donning different hats. But tell me, at the same time, is being too ambitious a quality that’s frown upon in a male-driven industry like showbiz?
A. (laughs) Maybe. I mean, I say I do everything because I’ll do whatever job I get. I’m not going to sit at home, sort of feeling like, oh, I haven’t acted in six months, so I have no work. Well, that is our lifestyle. No, we don’t know how much work we have at any given point of time. I know girlfriends of mine who started their careers a few years ago, and then the pandemic happened. They were losing their marbles, saying that, oh, my God, I can’t sit at home now.
I don’t care what people think, basically. They’re not putting the food on my table, so I’m going to do whatever it takes to put that food on my table. And as a fact of being too ambitious, without ambition, there is no fun for me, you know. And to be honest, the easiest thing for you is acting. How do you feel today? At certain points, I’m like, oh, I’m going to give it all up and have a dosa kadai in Spain. That’s also not in India. I can go and have a beach resort where I make dosas. Like, sometimes I want to give it all up, but then that lasts 24 hours, maybe.
Q. Besides being an actor, you are also a producer. When I speak to female producers, a lot of them talk about facing sexism in the boardroom when it comes to money matters, and being seen with a patronising eye. Did you also had to face these bias?
A. Yeah, absolutely. I tell my brother Manoj (Manoj Manchu) that you can go do one event, you know, and it’s still, I have to work three months for me to get paid the same amount that you get paid for one event. Not that he works more than me, just that he’s a man. Forget about the world, I see it right here in my closest vicinity too.
Q. When I look at your filmography, you have played some pretty interesting characters. Some of them deviate from the social standards of right and wrong, or are characters who have taken matters in their own hands. Let’s take for example, your roles in Gundello Godari and W/O Ram. Chitra in Gundello Godari pours hot water on the doctor when he fails to save her lover. In W/O Ram, Deeksha doesn’t flinch from killing her husband when she discovers that he was one of the perpetuators in her friend’s sexual assault and murder. In both the films, the theme of revenge plays a major part in the narrative.
I remember when Uma Thurman did Kill Bill, she said that her role was very empowering for her because she would have women walking up to her and sharing how her film released some sort of survival energy in them. Did you also feel empowered when you did those roles?
A. Absolutely. I mean, I make sure I beat up at least one man in most of my films (laughs). It’s my psychotic underlying joy, and I think that is one of the major reasons that I’m an actor, because there are so many avenues that you can release this through the characters that you play. As humble, as weak a girl might be seen, but when push comes to shove, she is Shakti, right? There is nothing that is stopping her. So, I love playing these roles because, as you said, kind of, you know, that I empower one woman to stand up for herself. And I don’t take that lightly.
I think I was put in a place of power to use my voice. So, acting has just become a way, a medium to get attention. But I feel, as I’m getting older, that my purpose is larger than this film, or that show, or this character. That the place that I’m in is far more greater in terms of how we can use this medium and podium to empower women. I think that is, for me, very, very, very important. Also, being a mother, you know, who are we raising in this world?
Recently, somebody really big was in my house. She’s a producer as well, and continuously is producing. And seeing how the narrative, no matter how much we are trying, because we can’t go to a network and say, this is a woman empowerment movie. They will immediately shut it down. But how having these men, these superstars, how do we navigate through them and still hold a powerful place for a woman. And then you hear about this French man drugging his wife and his daughter and doing horrible things. So, I mean, that’s the first, that’s supposed to get you, right? And when they are perpetrators, all kinds of people in this world. So, it is most important for a woman to find value within herself, for herself, rather than trying to get validation from the world outside.
I mean, I’m sitting here in Bandra and Bombay and saying all this, but I really want people in Anakapalle to feel like this, that they have a choice. And most of India, I mean, I am the 1% or the 3% or the 70%. But what happens to the rest of the 93% of India? How are we getting to them and penetrating them?
Q. In the last couple of years, you have films like Baahubali and RRR that have taken Telugu cinema to a global level. But at the same time, when you look at the Telugu mass films, they still have misogyny glaring at your face. There are times you feel there is no identity to the female protagonists beyond being an eye candy. Of course, there have been exceptions. But these changes do not permeate into the bigger-star driven films…
A. (cuts in) Give me names in your Hindi mass films that you know, with women more than just running around candidates. That is the overall large population. Ultimately, it’s a business, okay. I’m sitting here going, I’ve lost crores of rupees, trying to hold on to my values and ideas and ideals. I’m paying a big price for it. There are times that I have gone saying, damn it, why didn’t I just do it a certain way, so that I could have not been in this financial crisis, right? But then such is the world that we live in.
Ultimately, when these boys are spending Rs 100, 200, 300 crores, they are not doing it for a social cause. They’re doing it for bread and butter. I think rather than coming at artists saying, what are you doing? What are the politicians doing to make this world a better place and a safer place? It is the politicians’ prerogative, not the artists’. As artists, it’s our prerogative to make you think, to push boundaries, to make you uncomfortable, and to make you ask the questions that, by and large, that you’re not asking.
When you tell an artist to do it a certain way, then the artist is working through somebody else’s morality. That’s not what an artist’s job is. An artist’s job is to make you uncomfortable, it’s to make you think. When there is a proper way, they want to drown it. There are movies that come out and talk about what is not right, and you want to shut it.
Why was Padmaavat such a hue and cry? Why does an artist have to hold sentiments? When they don’t, we sit in, we don’t want to really disrespect anybody. We really show what is the truth. Sometimes, not being able to really show what is happening in the world. If that does bother you, then look at yourself and say, what inside you that you resonate with that is making you not like it? If you are not that kind of a person, then you’re going to go, wow, this is another perspective. It’s only when you identify yourself with something that is wrong, you’re like, oh my god, the rest will find out. Let me shut this down. It’s really your conscience and you need to look at yourself before you start saying, we’re artists, man, we’re artists.
Q. But my question was about why do you feel it’s difficult for filmmakers to keep their male gaze aside when it comes to portrayal of female characters…
A. Why are we denying the male gaze? That is again a problem for me. A man and woman are supposed to look at each other. A male gaze needs to happen. We need to teach the men what that gaze needs to look and feel like. A man can look at a woman and make her feel loved or make her feel like a commodity. It is about how the male gaze is now. This is what we do. Men shouldn’t look at us, but who’ll look at us then? Women. I don’t mind women looking at you, but what about procreation? You need a man.
We need to train our men on how to treat our women and our women on how not to take and become doormat to men. There is a lot of learning and understanding in the last 20 years or so. I really feel like there’s been a rebirth to the world and the universe with the internet as a boon. Now we’re asking these kinds of questions because we see this is not how the entire world is. Earlier, we would think, ‘yeh hi hai life aur aise hi hona chahiye.’
In India itself, we think so differently. I had somebody from Chhattisgarh talk to me saying, ‘ma’am, itna bura kar lete hai aap log divorce ko. Humare tribe main toh husband guzar gaya toh ladki ko freedom hai ki woh jaake dusre ladke ko dhund sake.‘ And then when you think about it, it is not us talking. It is our colonial and Persian mindset that is so instilled in us. It’s become a part of our DNA because we had to survive, right? When people were ruling us, it was flight or fright. What do you do when you think you’re going to die? You’re going to start saying yes to whatever they want you to do. And saying yes for about, I don’t know, seven, eight generations of our ancestry, we’ve become yes-men subconsciously to the Britishers and colonialism. We still haven’t really dug open what was ours and to relive that.
Q. You made your Tamil debut with Mani Ratnam‘s Kadal in 2013. Now, every person who has worked with him, irrespective of their screen time, talks about how it was an enriching experience for them. From an actor’s point of view, what was it being like to be on a Mani Ratnam set?
A. Dude, it’s not easy. It’s like being in training at the most rigorous army camp. And then no matter how much you do, it’s never enough. I’m putting it very lightly. He’s a super chill dude. Of course, there’s time after pack-up where we can sit, talk, chat, and have fun. But then when the sun rises, our man starts working. So you better be bringing your 100% every moment.
Q. But he writes his women characters in an interesting way. They have an agency. They have desires and ambitions. That’s quite refreshing, isn’t it?
A. He was the man who ruined my life, Mani Ratnam, for keeping the standards of these men. He needs to be blamed for it, and held responsible and accountable (laughs). Where the hell did he even find these men? How did he even write like this? He made me fall in love with cinema because of that. He made me fall in love and the standards of love for a man to be like that.
Q. I read somewhere that you were the first choice to play Sivagami’s role in Baahubali. You said that you turned it down because you didn’t want to play mom to Prabhas. And you don’t have any regrets. Fair enough. But you know, in a film like Baahubali, which was an ensemble film, it had the touring presence of Prabhas as Baahubali and Rana Daggubati as Bhallaladeva, and then, there is an equally strong presence of Sivagami…
A. We’re all talking about Baahubali today. When they were still making it, I had just come off my film, Anaganaga O Dheerudu. I didn’t want to go back to another one of these kinds of films immediately. And I would have had to give five years of whatever years of my life. I was just starting out. I wanted to play and explore even more. And, you know, I don’t know, maybe I would consider it now, but this was 10 years ago or even longer. How long has it been since Baahubali came out? And then calculate another five, six years before that. So I was not in my mind space.
I respect Rajamouli garu immensely. I am grateful that one of the top directors of India, and now one of the top directors of the world early on in my career thought that I could handle something, a character like Sivagami. I think nobody could have done a better job than Ramya Krishnan garu, and be real about that character. For me, you know, Rana and Prabhas are my boys, like we all know each other forever. Like I understand in that context, in the real history of it, women got married very, very young and had children by the time they are 14-15. But I really did not see myself like that. And even till today, no regrets, because I would have been like stamped to that, you know.
Remember in Doordarshan, there was Ramayan? They never had any careers after that. People couldn’t see him beyond Ram and they couldn’t see her beyond Sita. Can you imagine her doing a rain song? Exactly. So for me, films like Gundello Godari gave me a lot more.
Q. But when you finally watched Ramya Krishnan play that role, what thoughts crossed your mind?
A. I thought she was brilliant. She’s always magic every time she comes online and on the screen, and she sets it on fire. I have humongous respect for her, and so I only clapped the loudest.
Q. Kareena Kapoor Khan recently said that there is no harm in drawing inspiration from other actors as every actor needs some kind of motivation. In recent times, is there any actor whose work you watched and were blown away?
A. Vikrant Massey in 12th Fail. I have always enjoyed his work. But what he did with that film was something else. So I was really, really inspired. I think, in our lives as actors, we steal other people’s identities. I’m constantly stealing what I like from other actors. But what I’m not doing is telling you. And that’s what Meryl Streep says too. She’s like, I’m constantly stealing from people. But I’m not telling you where it’s coming from. Because when she owns it and makes it her own, then you’re not seeing the other person. You don’t even know what she’s told. She’s working through that.
Q. So far, you have done only one Hindi film, Ram Gopal Varma’s Department (2012). Why do we see very less of you in Bollywood?
A. I have moved to Mumbai. Let’s see what the world has in store for me here now.
Q. In the last few weeks, the K Hema Committee has opened a can of worms, and triggered a discussion across various film industries. Sometime back, there was the #MeToo movement that took the country by storm. Its aftermath was that the names that were called out continued to get work, while some who spoke against the exploitation got shadow-banned. At least, this time, we have some prominent faces addressing this issue, and I hope things change for the better. Isn’t it disheartening that we are in 2024, and women still have to fight for something as basic as safety at workplace?
A. It’s not something that’s answered with one question. Recently, I was very triggered when I did another interview for someone from Telugu. And she’s a Telugu woman from Telugu industry. And she’s like, in Kerala. I said, only in the film industry? I’m like, really? I said, give me other committees who have done other committee reports from other walks of life, from the IT industry, from the doctor’s industry, from the lawyers, professionals, what other professions have you done this analysis? Only from one state, one committee, so they came out with the truth. Now, compare it! Without comparison, how can you just blatantly paint it with a big brush and you sitting in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and you’re talking like this.
You know people every time they talk to me from Bollywood, they say this is happening in South India. Really? it’s everywhere. Just because the HEMA committee came out, everybody’s just pointing their guns at the film industry. I think this is a great way to lead into other industries too. It’s very important to see where else women are being taken advantage of. Then, we’ll have this discussion. We in Telugu industry have over 200 women in this group, and since 2019, have been diligently working to make a safe environment for actors, and who are in front of camera and behind camera. So, we don’t need to come out and hold a mic and say this is what we are doing, you know.
Q. Lastly, if you had the power that could let you change one thing about the film industry, what would that be?
A. Nothing too major. Just equal opportunities. I’ll make sure there are 51 women and 49 or 50 men on set.
