Hemant Madhukar reveals how Anushka Shetty and Madhavan came on-board for Nishabdham

Hemant Madhukar’s multi-starrer Nishabdham/Silence, which sees Anushka Shetty, R Madhavan and Anjali in the lead roles along with Michael Madsen, Shalini Pandey, Subbaraju and Srinivas Avasarala essaying pivotal roles, will soon hit OTT on October 2.
While that seems like the perfect star-cast, did you know that it was Taapsee Pannu who was initially supposed to portray the role of Sakshi, a mute artist and not Anushka.Talking about the same to a web-portal, Hemant Madhukar said in an interview, “Madhavan was excited and had already said yes, he was raring to do something different after Vikram Vedha. Taapsee was supposed to be paired along with him but Anushka was excited to come on-board after producer-writer Kona Venkat told her the film’s story on a plane ride,” he says.
What’s more, the film was supposed to be a silent one, true to the title. “Once the cast was finalised, we realised it would not be viable to make a film with no dialogues or songs. So Kona Venkat penned the dialogues, we shifted the story to the US and mounted it on a larger scale,” he says in the interview. Hemant Madhukar also calls Anushka a ‘director’s actor’. “She’s so dedicated, she took four months to learn how to paint and get a painter’s body language right. She also learnt sign language so she could make her character all the more believable,” he adds.
Nishabdham, which will also release in Tamil and Malayalam as Silence tells the story of Sakshi, a talented artist who is deaf and mute. She finds herself entangled in an investigation when she witnesses a tragic incident at a villa that’s supposedly haunted. Madhavan plays her husband, a celebrity musician called Anthony.