This Friday is a big day for Vaishnavi Chaitanya, whose journey from making YouTube sketches to playing supporting characters in films reaches a new high with Baby, a romantic drama in which she plays one of the lead characters, alongside Anand Deverakonda and Viraj Ashwin. Speaking about her excitement just days ahead of the release, Vaishnavi says, “All of us have done a good job. Be it the performances, the concept of the film, music, or writing, they are all amazing, and we are just hoping for a positive response from the audience.”
Vaishnavi is particularly grateful to the film for allowing her to essay a character with great scope to flaunt her range as a performer. The film, which explores the theme of ‘first love’, tracks her psychological and physical transformation from being a school kid in a Hyderabad basti (slum) to a modern college-going girl. But over the years, several films in the South have only antagonised the idea of the ‘modern woman’, arguing that the ‘city’ tends to pollute them.
Even a celebrated mainstream film like Padayappa (Narasimha in Telugu) establishes a submissive village belle played by Sowndarya as a good woman while the ultra-modern Neelambari (Ramya Krishnan) is the villain. How does Baby deal with this idea? “It’s quite different in Baby though. When a girl from a basti comes out of her world, even a city feels like America, because she isn’t exposed to such things. As she explores it, she experiences excitement, and during this process, she learns new things about life, people, and their thoughts. She even starts giving importance to self-care. We explore how she is influenced by people, how she reacts to these situations, and how it all affects her. Her transformation, as life takes her in a new direction, is pretty organic.”
As a school kid, the actress flaunts a darker complexion, whereas later on, as she embraces a more modern look, she is fair-skinned. Opening up about her makeup and how it influenced her performance, Vaishnavi says, “I was a bit conscious when I wore the dark makeup for the first time, but after the photo shoot, I understood the genuineness of it. I felt that I looked good and I could express myself better with my eyes. Even my director told me that since I was expressing well with my eyes, I didn’t have to worry about the complexion. I concentrated more on whether my eyes were expressing the emotion right or not. In fact, I like the character with the dark complexion more because her expressions and emotions are palpable," Vaishnavi says. She goes on to open up about her own journey with her skin tone. "Earlier, I used to be quite conscious about my skin tone; I would feel I was dark and wanted to be more fair; it was just something in my head. But a friend once told me that if you are too fair, you cannot emote with your fair and assured me that I was lucky to have this complexion. She told me to be happy with whatever I have.”
Before she signs off, Vaishnavi admits she is pinning all her hopes on Baby. “My life starts from here. My choices and future depend on it. Baby is life for me.”