Rom-Coms Provide Scope For Actresses To Perform: Milana Nagaraj

A ‘scream queen’ is an actor who stars in several horror films and becomes a staple of the genre. Actors such as Jamie Lee Curtis, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Urmila Matondkar have popularly been known as the scream queens of their generation. While there is no appropriate term for that in the rom-com genre, if there was, actor Milana Nagaraj would certainly be the perfect actor for that monicker.

Milana Nagaraj has starred in many rom-coms in her career and has ushered in a new brand of such films in Kannada cinema along with her husband Krishna. Known for their Love Mocktail franchise (2020, 2022), Milana has also starred in many other films of the same genre. Her recent outing For Regn, along with Dia’s Pruthvi Ambaar, has hit the screens. Interestingly, she was also seen in last year’s breakout hit Kausalya Supraja Rama, another romantic comedy.

A major reason why she does a lot of romantic comedies is that Milana believes actresses receive more scope to perform in such films. She says, “If I had to choose between a nice rom-com or a commercial entertainer, I would still choose the former because there is a chance to perform better. When I am approached for a mass film or a film based on an issue, I see that there is very little scope for my character and I will not be able to accept it.”

While rom-coms have a lot of mass appeal, the films also face criticisms and are not exactly cinephile-friendly. Actors and directors usually face criticism for their works more directly when such a film releases and Milana Nagaraj too admits that she has faced her fair share of criticisms. Milana has also been on the technical side of her films such as Love Mocktail, where she has been a co-writer as well as a co-producer along with her husband Krishna.

Even if there are criticisms, Milana says if the director is happy, the actor in her is also happy. But it hits differently as a writer, she explains. “As a writer, the criticisms matter to me a lot. Both Krishna and I have gone to theatres and watched our films with the audiences. It helps us write better next time. Sometimes we would have written a scene expecting a certain kind of reaction, but the audience would not react that way. We have learned a lot from this process instead of listening to the criticisms of others.”

She further adds that one should enter the theatres as an audience and not a critic. “If I place myself in the audience’s shoes, I would say we should be excited to go and watch a film unless it’s annoyingly bad. But if we go in intending to find faults, it’s a problem.”