Rashmika Mandanna: Bollywood often invokes regional contexts of actors to justify accents, and Dhanush is no exception-he’s often cast more to typical South Indian roles, letting him use diction while seeming natural in his performance. Rashmika Mandanna’s performance in Animal was similarly solid; Mandanna’s character is South Indian, and her accent is enough to hold moderate truthfulness, with some diction issues.

When It Doesn’t Work

However, not all projects have achieved this satisfactorily. Mandanna’s performance in *Chhaava* demonstrated the problems with forcing an accent with very little context. The film asked Mandanna to observe a Marathi accent, though she was still struggling to adjust her Hindi diction in *Chhaava*. There were specific examples, such as Mandanna’s character explaining military strategy to children, which were comical—it became immediately obvious to the audience that a character’s authenticity is lost without establishing the accent/character, and trying to force this was distracting and comical.

The Professional Element.

Despite all this, Rashmika remains a much sought after actress, and it is mostly due to her professionalism and warmth while working on set.: directors and writers confidently cast Rashmika because she is a performer who, regardless of language, will elevate your film. This raises an obligation of the filmmaker though: if you cast an actor to act in a language or accent that actor is not comfortable performing it needs to make sense in relation to character and project.

In Favor of Contextual Authenticity

The film industry in Bollywood must re-evaluate the casual use of foreign or regional accents when the narrative does not support it. For instance, if I play the role of Maratha kings, I will speak like that character spoke in the relative equivalent of proper Sanskritised Hindi–not like a person who speaks Hindi and chooses to inflect that speech with accents/intonations from Marathi. This sounds inauthentic–much like exaggerated “foreign English,” with the English spoken in Hollywood films. The accents should serve the actors and the directs narrative, not draw attention to themselves.

Ultimately, actors like Rashmika Mandanna are talented and unquestionably multilingual. That said, it is the role of the director to make their language, accent, and character all work together to make a rich and dynamic cinematic experience.

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