Fire and Fury

Samantha Ruth Prabhu has ascended to the top-overcoming a multitude of forces along the way.

- ANKUR PATHAK

While the age of streaming has led to the collapse of regional boundaries and made our film industries more fluid, few actors have truly managed to cross over and succeed in the manner that Samantha Ruth Prabhu has. Whether it's her earlier work in Tamil and Telugu films or her more recent turns in The Family Man's second season and Citadel: Honey Bunny, she comes like a force of nature, seamlessly weaving her physicality into her performances, blending grit, vulnerability and spunk.

Despite inhabiting hyperreal worlds of espionage, intelligence and militancy, Samantha has always managed to keep it real. And that's what you feel when you speak to her too: real talk without the use of the meaningless platitudes that so many of our actors (publicists, take note) have been trained into parroting. It's the same inner drive for subtle defiance that often shapes the roles she chooses to play.

"I think every woman out there is kicking ass with a certain sense of vulnerability, no?" she ponders. "No woman is just pretty or just ambitious or just self-sacrificial. She's a combination of several contradictions and complications.

Those are the kind of characters I really like, the ones that have a little bit of everything. Because I am like that. A lot of people relate to my characters because they see a part of themselves in me." While Samantha's kicking up a storm on screen, it has taken a lot of time and effort-and some intervention-for the actress to see herself for who she is, as opposed to who people want her to be. Not long ago, she would wake up in cold sweats, her heart racing, terrified to even pick up her phone, dreading the weight of the world's judgment, paralysed by the fear of what was being said about her.

Another public comment, a snarky remark on her appearance, or a snide one about her body or her skin colour-the stream of vitriol was endless. Did she receive any support to combat this? None.