Actress Madhoo on playing Queen Pannaga: 'I didn’t have a fight master'

Madhoo, who plays a warrior queen in Kannappa, says she is being offered stronger characters in her second innings

Playing a warrior queen in a big-budget action extravaganza is an opportunity that rarely comes in an actor’s life. Naturally then, Madhoo is delighted to be part of Kannappa that sees Vishnu Manchu play the titular role, and has cameos by Mohanlal, Prabhas and Akshay Kumar. Madhoo essays the role of Queen Pannaga, a fierce warrior queen. “My character leads her [all-women] army in their fight against the other clans. I had to do war scenes for the first time,” says the senior actor. 

Director Mukesh Kumar Singh’s multi-lingual offering is based on the legend of Kannappa, a devotee of Lord Shiva. Shooting for the war sequences was a demanding experience, says Madhoo. “Since I am slender, on the first day, the [makers] wondered, ‘How will this delicate woman look like a strong warrior?’ I didn’t have a fight master to train me nor did I have any workshops, so I trained myself. The stunts were like choreographed dance steps shown to me 10 minutes before my scene, and I could pull them off because I work out every day.”

Madhoo, who forayed into Bollywood with Phool Aur Kaante (1991), is enjoying the current phase of her career more than ever. Reason? She explains, “In my new innings, producers don’t come to me with soft roles. My characters are strong. In the old days, be it Roja [1992] or Pehchaan [1993], my roles had a softness in the beginning, but became strong eventually. Now, people are seeing me in a different light.”

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