Actors Who Say They Don't Read Reviews Are Liars: TJ Bhanu

As I meet TJ Bhanu in a cafe in Chennai, she offers me the coffee she was just served and calls the waiter to ask for a new one. She adds, “Anna, apdiye konjam anbu serthu kudunga (Brother, add a bit of love).” A filmy intro that I will never forget, I tell myself. “It’s something I learned from Dulquer when we worked together on Guns & Gulaabs (2023). Even if there is something wrong with the food, he tells them what’s wrong and asks them to offer it with more love for it to taste better," Bhanu fondly recalls, letting me know that this is one of the rare times she is giving an interview. 

But why? Her first Tamil film was Vaazhl (2021), where she played Yathramma (the mother of Yathra, a small boy). Yathramma proudly wore her sexiness on her sleeves and is considered by many as a femme fatale. While Bhanu loved playing the character, the kind of questions she was asked at the interviews later made her feel uncomfortable. But a lot of people suggested I start giving interviews, she remarks. 

A few people know Bhanu as Chandralekha from Guns & Gulaabs and for most others down south, she is either Yathramma from Vaazhl or Devi from Imaigal (a short in Modern Love Chennai). She was also recently seen as Gayatri in Bejoy Nambiar’s Por/Dange. Bhanu is a Telugu ammayi brought up in Chhattisgarh, but she quite swiftly shifts between speaking Tamil and Hindi. "It’s not that I got to watch films in all these languages as a kid, it’s just that I love languages," Bhanu tells us. “There was no television at home back in the day. I studied in Hindi medium and my parents would speak Telugu at home. But when we talk about films, I rarely watched one or two when I was a kid.”

Starting her professional journey at the age of 16, she took up a job as a newsreader before giving radio and modelling a shot, and finally venturing into cinema. While she explains that she decided to discontinue her PhD in literature and make up for it with all the reading she does, I quickly glance at the pocket-size book of Albert Camus’ Create Dangerously and a script of her next series on the table. “When I don’t have a book with me, I feel empty sometimes. If I like something, I can enjoy it. If not, the book helps me get into a different world. So a book is always a good backup plan. And when you read a book or act in a film, you don’t judge the character but experience their journey. If you don’t create art, you can become an art appreciator. It’s always good. Oru vishayatha pyithiyama therinjikalaam, andha pythiyakaarathanam enaku pudikum. (You can madly learn about something. I like the craziness).”

Reading literature also helps her in choosing characters, Bhanu asserts. She says that a strong woman in Indian cinema is often restricted to someone who smokes, drinks or maybe talks spontaneously. “But even if a woman talks very slowly but does what she wants, she is a strong person. I don't want to play a woman who tries to be a man, I want to play a woman who knows who she is.” This is something she keeps looking for in scripts. “All my characters so far, fortunately, are full of life; they have a rich inner life. Besides, the influence of literature is always there even in the way I look at my characters. I compare them with the women I have read about and relate how similarly they behave. There are a lot of times the characters don't do something I have personally done, and the literature I have read helps me. The women I have played have hope, love and courage in them. All we have is acting and that's deceptive."

Another thing she loves is to stay in her character even before and after the cut. "Every time I play a character, my first principle is that I will not do any other film in between." It's not just that Bhanu thinks she should be in her character's element to give her best. "It's because being that character throughout the filming period gives me happiness. Isn't that why I became an actor?...to live as another character for those days, to think like them and feel all their emotions. Even if I am drinking coffee, like right now, I would think about what my character would think or do. The scene is not there in the paper but I would just like to imagine. It gives you a high."

She also tells us about the time she played an Indian soldier in The Forgotten Army and how she would always carry her rifle around. "My character, Rasamma, keeps shooting and fighting in the film and it's not like I can do it in real life. But I used to always carry the rifle with me on the sets. I wanted to take the full weight of it. When the shoot is over, would anyone give that to you? It's just fun. I think I hide behind my characters," Bhanu quips.

She likes her characters so much that she ensures she does the dubbing as well. For instance, when she was playing Devi in Imaigal, Balaji Sakthivel and Thiagarajan Kumararaja initially said that her voice was husky and they needed someone else to dub. "But I told them that I can change my voice. Even Yathramma's voice is not like mine. It was made for her." And when she changed her voice and said a dialogue over a phone call, Kumararaja was convinced. To provide more authenticity, Bhanu always slept blindfolded during the whole shoot of Imaigal. "Until I walk to the restroom and wash my face in the morning, I have the blindfold on. But it's not like it's a big method. Jeff Goldberg, my acting teacher, told me not to fake it but to live it. He is someone I approach with all my scripts and try different training methods.” When she walked around blindfolded and stumbled upon something, she felt that shudder at the core of her stomach. This helped me understand the character, she says. “I also tried everything blindfolded for a whole day and the next day I could see the mess I had created but that day the coffee I made with a blindfold was really special, it never tasted that good before."

As someone who always preferred doing one film at a time, being part of a bilingual (Por and Dange) was sometimes overwhelming for her. As an actor, there are ups and downs while shooting for a film, Bhanu says. "Everyone has that one bad day, even in a book about Dilip Kumar, it’s written that he took 39 takes one day but it didn't work out and they packed up and left. Like that, I remember breaking down once on the sets of Por and Dange as I was shooting back to back in both languages. I was then showing the particular sequence we shot that day to different people, asking them if it was okay. Sometimes the energy on the sets also affects us.”

Even in general, Bhanu says she is always more nervous than excited and is doubtful till the first review drops. “I don't have the happy streak in me. So when I look at a few reviewers and they talk about me, it helps. Any actor who says they don't look at reviews, they are a liar. How else would an artist know whether they have done it good or bad?" But she also agrees that not all reviews come from the space of art appreciation. "A lot of people review a film and we can't keep track of everything. Some people even talk about random things on YouTube and give reactions. Their works may go viral but that doesn't mean there is substance to it. But you know a few reviewers in the industry who do it with a lot of passion even if they are learning, they are passionately learning it. So you just watch those."

About her future plans, Bhanu says Imaigal showed her how beautiful it is to be a part of a love story and she wants to do a genuine, complete love story. “Something like Sapta Saagaradaache Ello. A big thing in an ordinary human's life is love. And SSE made it clear to many that it's not the people who made the film better but the film that made the people better. I want to do such films."