Bhavana got Bhamaa to work in Arjuna

This is the first time Kannada director PC Shekar has worked with Bhamaa — a popular actress on the Malayalam screen. Ahead of the release of their film Arjuna, Shekar tells us that he had never met the actress until the first day of shoot. “I had called Bhamaa for the role in Arjuna after I watched her Kannada film Shylu. I felt she would fit the role of Arjuna’s love interest perfectly.All our discussions happened only over the phone,” recalls the director. Incidentally, it was also the director’s previous work that compelled the actress to take up the task at hand. “Bhamaa also happens to be a close friend of actress Bhavana, who I had worked with on the Kannada film Romeo. She told me she had heard a lot about me — good things I presume — which was why she agreed to do Arjuna,” says Shekar. However, day one of the shoot presented a bit of a surprise for the director. “It was the first time we were meeting and I was quite struck by how quiet and soft-spoken Bhamaa was. If you said a hundred things, she would reply with just a word or two. I was concerned about how such a quiet person would portray an aggressive character onscreen. But a few days into the shoot, I knew I had made the right choice. Bhamaa is a very different person when the camera is on. She has given it her 500%, and that is not for me to say so alone; I am pretty sure the audience will see this for themselves shortly,” he says.