Exclusive! Hitha on playing Yuva Rajkumar’s sister in Yuva– It’s a good role that will reach people

Hitha Chandrashekar is 7-8 films old, but next week is when she gets the biggest release of her career yet, when Yuva, the launchpad of Yuva Rajkumar hits theatres. Hitha plays Yuva’s sister in the film, a casting she’s been wanting to announce to the world for the longest, but could not until the trailer release on March 21. Now that everyone knows, she’s finally in a position to talk about working in the film, albeit limited, as director Santhosh Ananddram is keen on maintaining the mystery surrounding some aspects of Yuva until its theatrical release, which is only a week away.

Hitha's role in Yuva

“The team was very particular that details about the movie and its cast should be out only along with the trailer,” laughs Hitha, when asked about how she managed to keep this role such a secret, adding, “Technically, I was in the best position. As the sister, I share screen space with Achyuth sir and Sudharani ma’am who play our parents, and, of course, the leading man himself. As is the case with most siblings, normally one child is the ideal offspring, the one who strives to keep the parents happy, while the other doesn’t. Here, I am the former, while Yuva is up to no good. She is a normal middle-class daughter, who has finished her education, has a job, is independent, but at the same time is also there as a support system for her family,” the actress explains.

As seen in the trailer, Yuva revolves around the repercussions of the gang wars the protagonist gets involved in while a student at an engineering college in Mangaluru. The tensions between students and a local goon extend beyond the campus and impact Yuva’s family too, which makes Hitha’s character also an integral part of the plot, one assumes. “Well, yeah, but I cannot tell you more at this point. However, what I will say is that Yuva is a proper family entertainer; it has elements of everything. The target audience is the Appu sir fanbase, so it is the kind of movie that he would do. It is very similar to that,” says Hitha.

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Finally, sharing screen space with Sudharani in Yuva

The actress adds that although Yuva is filled with a lot of commercial elements, there is a strong storyline, only part of which Santhosh has hinted at in the trailer. “It may seem like Mr and Mrs Ramachari or Yuvarathnaa now, but when you see the film in theatres, you will realize it has a distinct story,” she states. As for how she got the role, Hitha tells us that the team was keen to have her play the sister, so there was no audition, per se, but she had to do a look test to see how the combination will look as a family. “Within a month of the call, we began shooting and I had about 15-days’ worth of work, most of which was at one location in Bengaluru,” she says.

“Sudharani ma’am and I pull off the mother-daughter look, I think, while Achyuth sir and Yuva have some similarities. Together as a family, we look quite believable. Incidentally, this is my third film with Sudharani ma’am and only the first in which we share screen space. Both of us worked on Premier Padmini and Thurthu Nirgamana, but had no scenes together, so when I got the call for Yuva, among the many reasons to take it up, the fact that I was finally truly working with her was also one,” says Hitha.

But having played sister to a leading man, wasn’t Hitha at any point worried about being typecast to such roles? “I think that becomes a problem only if I do another sister role. It is still in my hands to choose the work I want to do and I am privileged enough that I do not have to take up everything that comes my way. I am okay to wait and choose and do only what I really want to do. At this point, I am not worried, because I am not going to let that happen. It did happen to me with ads, though, where I was constantly getting to play a mother, so that is a learning I have from that space. I can’t blame anyone but myself for that,” she explains.

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Hitha, though, is not hung up about only playing lead roles. “I am okay playing character roles also, if I have stuff to do, scope for performance and screen time; basically, the assurance that this role will not only fetch me name and fame, but also more work. If, in that process I end up getting the same kind of roles, I will take a step back and say no,” she explains.

Wouldn’t she want to play typical heroine roles, though? “I don’t want to just be the love interest who is only there for the glam element and nothing more. That is not my niche at all; I want to do more performance-based roles. However, this will have to be work that also reaches people. It is disheartening when you put in a lot of work and it doesn’t fetch you anything. It has happened earlier, and I don’t want a repeat. With Yuva, everything kind of aligned; the role was good and with a banner like Hombale Films behind it, I am assured that the film will get maximum exposure,” she signs off.