Actor Aparna Balamurali was flooded with praises for her portrayal of Bommi in the film ‘Soorarai Potru’. The movie directed by Sudha Kongara, which released earlier this month, is inspired from events in the life of Deccan Airways founder Captain GR Gopinath and his book ‘Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey’. The film has Suriya in the lead and also casts Paresh Rawal, Karunas, Urvashi and others in crucial roles.
Aparna essayed the role of a bold independent woman who wished to start her bakery business and the film focuses on her marriage to Maaran, who is determined to launch a low cost airline. Not only did Aparna have to work very hard to get into character, Bommi took on other challenges, one of them being language. The film’s team released a behind the scenes video that shows just how much effort the actor had to put to play one of the most endearing woman characters seen in Tamil cinema in recent times.
After a very long time, the Suriya starrer gave Tamil cinema fans a strong woman character to root for. In the video, Aparna can be seen practising her Tamil dialect that we heard in the film, perfecting the Madurai drawl. Artists Virumandi and Sathya can be seen guiding Aparna, correcting her pronunciations and offering suggestions during the dubbing. Aparna is also seen in actor Kalairani’s theatre workshop
“I can manage Tamil. But this felt like a totally different language,” she says with a laugh. She also adds that there were tons of language experts and local people to help correct her Tamil. In the video, Aparna explains that from costume to make up, the makers of the film wanted everything about Bommi to be unique.
“I have never worked in any other film, the way I have worked for this,” she says in the video, adding that there were multiple reading sessions and language corrections to get the Madurai tamil dialect right.
“They tried a lot of things on me,” she says. “Usually with Madurai women, they wear bangles. But here we thought, why should only men wear amulets or Kada. And we decided that Aparna can also wear one,” a crew member adds.
The character is seen wearing a lot of organza sarees. Speaking about costumes, the film’s costume designer Poornima said that she was skeptical about Organza sarees on Bommi initially.
“I had some doubts about organza sarees, as it makes you look a little heavy when you wear them. But then we realised that for Bommi, it did not matter if she was a size zero or a size 14. And even Aparna stood there saying that she will wear whatever she is given,” Poornima added.
The actor also took a 7-day acting workshop to get into Bommi’s skin, which included dancing, acting and other exercises.
Soorarai Potru is available to watch on Amazon Prime.
Watch Aparna’s video here