Raj B Shetty on casting Chaithra in Toby: She is talented and could pull off different looks

If you’ve followed Chaithra J Achar’s social media pages, you’d have noticed that besides the gazillion glam ima ges that she uploads frequently, there are also some of her with her pals, notably among them being actor-filmmaker Raj B Shetty and composer Midhun Mukundan. Chaithra met Raj during the making of her debut film Mahira and even though they did not share screen space together back then, they hit it off and became friends, a bond that has only grown over the years.

Their first professional collaboration came with Raj’s last directorial, Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana, in which he and Midhun got her to sing the song Sojugada. Toby is their first onscreen collaboration, which, Raj admits, didn’t occur to him at first. During a recent promotional interview, Raj said that when he was looking at casting for the character of Jenny, it was his pal Balakrishna Arwankar who suggested that Chaithra would be a good fit . Raj admits that on account of only considering her a friend and not a colleague, he almost overlooked her and when he then thought about it, he too felt that she was perfect for the role.

Read also: Chaithra Achar: It’s amazing to be a part of great productions where you are treated as an equal

The role, he explained, required Chaithra to play a younger version of the character, as well as a slightly older one too, which, with the right costume and makeup she could pull off easily. He cited the example of Rishab Shetty, who looks drastically different clean shaven, with only moustache and then, with a full beard. “Very few actors have such versatility; I do not have that,” Raj had said. But Chaithra’s looks apart, the role of Jenny, he added, is rather challenging, and Raj got the confidence that she could do it after seeing her in a film called Gilky, in which she played a character with cerebral palsy.

Read also: Chaithra J Achar on Toby: I had ample freedom to experiment with my role on this film

Toby, directed by Basil AL Chalakkal, which also stars Samyukta Hornad, Gopalkrishna Deshpande, Bharath GB and Raj Deepak Shetty, among others, will be in theatres on August 25.