Samantha Ruth Prabhu’s upcoming sci-fi action thriller Yashoda is all set to hit the big screens on November 11. The movie, set against the backdrop of a surrogacy racket, is directed by Harish and Hari under the banner of Sridevi Movies. Pitched as a ‘pan-India’ film, Yashoda is heading towards release in five languages, namely Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi. Ahead of the movie release, TNM caught up with Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, who would be seen playing the head of a surrogacy facility in Yashoda. In an exclusive interview, Varalaxmi speaks about her role in the sci-fi thriller, her association with Samantha, her upcoming projects and more.
“My role [in Yashoda] has shades of grey. It is not exactly a positive or negative character. If you see the film, you will understand that she is like an onion, with so many layers. It’s a different character. It is also not static, there are a lot of ups and downs,” Varalaxmi says. She adds that though Yashoda is a fictional story, it has stories that are inspired from individuals in real life.
While the movie does not approach surrogacy as right or wrong, the concept is of significance, the actor says. Sharing her opinion on the practice, she says, “Surrogacy is a beautiful process, and it happens in many countries. A lot of people who can't have children turn to surrogacy as a method to have their own kids.”
In the movie, Varalaxmi's role almost runs parallel to that of Samantha, sharing the maximum screen space, she revealed. Speaking about her association with Samantha, Varalaxmi says, “I have known Samantha for more than a decade. We used to hang out in Chennai. Even on the set, there was a lot of madness and fun whenever we were together, though the movie deals with a serious subject.”
Commenting on Samantha’s recent revelation that she had been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called Myositis, Varalaxmi says she was not aware of her health condition when they were on the set. Samantha on Saturday, October 29, had taken to social media to reveal her autoimmune disorder. “She is a survivor. Of course, she will fight it and come out stronger,” Varalaxmi says.
Though she hails from Tamil Nadu, Varalaxmi recently moved to Hyderabad as she has been doing back-to-back Tollywood projects. The actor's career graph has been on the rise ever since she played a negative character, Jayamma, in Ravi Teja's Krack (2021). “I am grateful to the audience for loving the character Jayamma. I have been getting more roles now. But I won't let myself get typecast. Whatever role I get, I will do it with variation,” says the actor.
For her upcoming roles in Yashoda and Balakrishna’s Veera Simha Reddy, Varalaxmi has lost 15 kilograms of weight. “I have transformed myself because I thought it would be nicer to bring some variations to the roles in my upcoming films, Yashoda and Veera Simha Reddy. In one of them, I would be playing the role of a college goer, so I thought the transformation would make sense. For both films, the shoots concerning the present day were completed before my transformation, and I shot the flashback parts after the weight loss,” she says.
She is going to play a “crazy role” in her movie with Balayya, Varalaxmi says, adding that she, however, could not reveal much about it at this point. In addition to a handful of Telugu films, the actor says she recently signed a Tamil film too.