Vidya Balan recently confirmed that she is a part of the NTR biopic and will be playing the role of NTR’s wife Basavatarakam. The biopic, which has NTR’s son Balakrishna essaying the role of the former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, went on floors earlier this year.
Balan was quoted as saying that the lack of information about Basavatarakam was what excited her the most about the role. Basavatarakam Nandamuri married NTR in 1942 and had 12 children with him. She passed away in 1985 after suffering from cancer. NTR even had an Indo-American Cancer Centre built in 1986 in her memory.
The actor-turned-politician later got married to Lakshmi Parvathy, a Sanskrit lecturer and his biographer in 1992 after living together for several years. Ram Gopal Varma recently announced that he would be making a biopic on their relationship titled Lakshmi’s NTR.
Talking to Mumbai Mirror, Balan said, “While Basavatarakam is not NTR, she is extremely integral to his story and that’s why I’m doing this film.” Four of the last seven films of Balan’s were women-centric with Balan playing the title character.
About her decision to be a part of this movie, she said “Their storyline and screenplay were in place, but work is still in progress. I still don’t know what it is about this film that interested me. Let’s say it was an instinctive decision.”
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The actor had played the lead role in the Silk Smitha biopic Dirty Picture in 2011 winning rave reviews for her performance. She had to undergo salsa training in order to obtain her character’s body movements and had to put on weight to suit the role. Balan was also initially approached to essay the role of Malayalam writer Kamala Das in the biopic Aami. She had initially agreed to be a part of the film only to back out later. Later, director Kamal had said, “Had Vidya played the role, sexuality would have crept in. This was a part even I didn’t pay much attention to.”