I want 2023 to be peaceful and adventurous: Lakshmi Manchu

Actress Lakshmi Manchu had one helluva year in 2022. She hosted a cooking show on an OTT platform, debuted in Malayalam with the Monster featuring Mohanlal and is starring with her father, Mohan Babu, for the first time in the Telugu film Agni Nakshatram. “I had such a good year. It started out so shakily because I had tested positive for Covid. But everything that followed after has been a blessing,” she tells us.

Reflecting back on the year, she tells us playing Manju Durga/Catherine Alexandra, a grey character who’s also a lesbian in the film headlined by Mohanlal, has been one of the highlights of the year. “It was such an out-of-the-box role that I grabbed it with both my hands and gave it my all. I’m truly glad that the audience loved me and the character both,” she adds. The actress even learnt Kalaripayattu as a hobby while shooting for the film in Kerala, something that was completely new for her. “The year has all been about pushing myself out of my comfort zone,” she chimes in.

With Telugu and even south Indian cinema reaching a global audience this year, Lakshmi yearns to soon make her debut in Kannada. “So many people recognise me in Bengaluru that it’s a shame that I didn’t get to work in Sandalwood yet. Look at Kantara; it made me so guilty that I didn’t watch the film in theatres when I finally caught it on OTT,” she says. But Lakshmi, who worked on TV series like Las Vegas and Desperate Housewives apart from movies like The Ode and Basmati Blues, was in a way global even before it was a ‘thing’. Ask her about it, and pat came the reply, “I chose to come back for my family; a lot of life-changing decisions were made back then. None of it was planned, but I knew what it’s like to represent brown people on American television. I was also the first Disney sorceress from India with Anaganaga O Dheerudu once I came back, so I’m just getting started.”

Now that Lakshmi is also a reiki master, she firmly believes ‘the way to look forward is to look inward’, as she puts it. “I believe the world is changing rapidly, and I do my best to catch up. We’re already in the future, and the kind of stories being told are changing. There’s so much to celebrate, especially with the way RRR is breaking boundaries,” she says.

Above and beyond everything, Lakshmi says, working with her father, Mohan Babu will be the thing she cherishes the most this year. “I took all my ego as an actor on sets because there’s no other way I could survive sharing the screen with him. I can’t reveal much about my character, but the film is an engaging thriller with a super interesting story,” she tells us animatedly, adding, “More than anything, I loved spending time with nanna between shots. It gave us a chance to spend so much time together after so long. We also shot a song together; that was really fun.”
Come 2023, Lakshmi wants to find that sweet balance between work and life. “I want to travel as much as I can with my daughter (Vidya Nirvana) before she’s too old; she’s already 9 and will soon want to do her own thing. I hope the coming year is peaceful and adventurous and sees exciting scripts come my way. I’m already shooting for Agni Nakshatram, Lechindi Mahila Lokam and a Tamil film called Nonstop. I hope I continue entertaining the audience,” she says, rounding off.