Exclusive! Excited to play the lead in Vijayanand, but more so about working with Anant Nag: Siri

As a trained dancer, model and theatre aficionado, Siri Prahlad was hellbent on a career in showbiz. Although she was also a finalist at the Bengaluru edition of the Times Fresh Face contest in 2014, along with Rashmika Mandanna and Ashika Ranganath, Siri’s break came a wee bit later. “I hail from an orthodox middle-class family with absolutely no ties to any form of performing arts. Naturally, the path laid out for me was to focus on academics and get a regular 9-5 job. As part of my dance class, though, every year we would do a dance drama, through which I met a lot of people associated with theatre. I was not sure if it would pan out into anything else for me, but I kept doing it as a hobby. In college, of course, I started modelling and the offers for TV and films started coming in. My parents, though, insisted that I complete my studies and then take a call on what I want to do. I am a university rank-holder with a graduate degree in Chemistry, Microbiology and Bio-technology and was placed from college with Ernst and Young, but I decided against it and followed my passion,” she says.

Thankfully, when Siri then announced that she wanted to pursue a career in showbiz, her parents were more than supportive. “Initially, I thought about taking up the job and then going for auditions during weekends, because I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get hold of a good offer. Interestingly, TV came my way and I did my first and only serial to date, Yugala Geethe, in which I was the female lead. The show ran for about a year, until the telecasting channel had a relaunch of sorts. At this point, I had had enough of TV and wanted to try my hand at films, even though there were offers for Tamil and Telugu shows,” she says.

In her quest to then be a part of the kind of film that she’d like to see, Siri got selected for a role in Ondu Shikariya Kathe, the narration for which won her over. “As soon as I finished shooting for Ondu Shikariya Kathe, I got the second lead role in Law, from a production house that had offered me another serial, which I had turned down. They then gave me the role in their film, which was later picked up by Puneeth Rajkumar’s banner, PRK Productions. While I was waiting for these films to release and then pick my next project, the pandemic struck,” she adds.

At the time, Ondu Shikariya Kathe had got just under a week’s outing in movie halls, before everything went into shutdown mode. “Law then became a direct-to-OTT release in mid-2020, while Ondu Shikariya Kathe followed a few months later on the same platform. Subsequently, when lockdown relaxations came in, I signed up for a college romance story called Buddies, in which I am paired with Kiran Raj of Kannadathi fame. The film is nearly done and only one song is pending to be canned,” says Siri, who is right now in Hubballi, shooting for her next.

“I’ve been selected to play the female lead in Vijayanand, which is the biopic of Hubballi-based transport-and-media baron Vijay Sankeshwar. The film is being made by Sankeshwar’s home banner, directed by Rishika Sharma, with Nihal Rajput in the title role. I play his wife, Lalitha Sankeshwar, and have three distinct looks in the film, in keeping with the character’s age progression. Although I had to audition for the role, the clincher, I think, was that I have a north Karnataka background and the team wanted someone who could manage the dialect of the region, which I can,” she says, adding that the first schedule, which began with the muhurtha on October 23, will continue till about November 20 for her. “They are looking at finishing principal photography in about 80-90 days with adequate breaks, of which I am a part of at least 50%,” says Siri.

Apart from the fact of being in a biopic on the life of a Padma Shri-winning entrepreneur from Karnataka, the high point for Siri is that she gets to act with veteran actor Anant Nag. “He is BG Sankeshwar, Vijay’s father in the film and my character’s father-in-law, so I have a lot of scenes with him. It’s such a dream-come-true moment. I have grown up watching his films and hoped and prayed to someday be able to work with him. I think I am extremely fortunate to be sharing screen space with a legend like him. It’s a wonderful experience just being around him,” she signs off.