Why Keerthy, Why Not Samanta?

Director Nag Ashwin and his team working on ‘Mahanati’ movie coming out as biopic on Savithri released Women’s Day special poster yesterday revealing the faces of Keerthy Suresh and Samanta in main leads. Going by the commercial Tollywood characteristic, obviously one would expect Samanta to play central role and Keerthy to reprise main supporting character. 

But, that’s not the case. Samanta is playing second fiddle to Keethy which came as a big surprise for many. Beyond the guess, Nag Ashwin showed his honesty by picking Keerthy over Sam. Reports from ‘Mahanati’ confirm that Keerthy is the only actress they found in current South Indian cinema who fits to the tee as Savithri and none other can do justice at least on physical attributes like eyes, nose and overall look.

‘We tried every young heroine to match with Savithri and finally zeroed on Keerthy. Still the pre production is under progress. As we finalized the main casting and yesterday was women’s day, we released the lead faces epitomizing the women power,’ director Nag Ashwin said exclusively in a chat with Cinejosh.