Samantha Akkineni in The Family Man Season 2. (Photo: Amazon Prime Video) Samantha Akkineni is receiving immense love for her role as Raji in the popular series The Family Man 2, which not only marked her debut in the OTT space and Bollywood but also in the action genre. Samantha, for the first time in her career, is seen performing action-sequences all by herself. On Sunday, Samantha shared two clips on her Instagram account. While one of the videos showed her performing the action sequence on-screen, the other clip showed her practicing her action choreography.
Samantha thanked action-choreographer Yannick Ben for his support. She wrote, “A special special thankyouuuu to my person @yannickben 🤗🙌 for training me to do all of my own stunts (yes all of them ).. for pushing me to give it my all even when every part of my body ached (thanks for the pain killers by the way). I have a solid fear of heights but I jumped off that building only because I knew you had my back .. lots and lots of love @yannickben”
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Last week, after the show premiered on Amazon Prime Video, Samantha expressed how the role of Raji is always going to be special for her.
She went on to elaborate on the suffering of Eelam Tamils and the research that went into playing Raji in The Family Man Season 2.
“When @rajanddk approached me to do the character, I was aware that portraying Raji’s character required sensitivity and balance. The creative team shared documentaries of the Tamil struggle that included stories of women in the Eelam war. When I watched those documentaries, I was aghast and shocked by the troubles and unspeakable grief that the Tamils of Eelam went through over an extended period of time. I noticed that the aforementioned documentaries had only a few thousand views and that is when it dawned on me how the world just looked away when tens of thousands people of Eelam lost their lives. And, lakhs more lost their livelihood and their homes. *Countless many* continue to live in far away lands with the wounds of the civil strife still fresh in their hearts and minds,” she wrote.
She concluded her post by saying that she wants her character to “be a stark, much-needed reminder for us, more than ever before, to come together as humans to fight hate, oppression, and greed. If we fail to do so, countless more will be denied their identity, liberty, and their right to self-determination.”
Earlier in an interview with indianexpress.com, the makers of The Family Man 2 Raj and DK spoke about how for Samantha the role was a risky one.
“Samantha’s choice of doing The Family Man 2 is an extremely risky one, especially if you see how passionately her fans follow her work. Already there are few comments saying, ‘What did you do to our beautiful Samantha?’ I said she is still beautiful, in just a different role. Someone like her doing this role is very risky. It is brave to say, ‘I am going to let go of all the things people look in me, in my character and I will embrace a completely different, contrasting character and try and do my best with it,” Raj Nidimoru of Raj and DK said.
The Family Man, which premiered on June 4, also stars Manoj Bajpayee and Sharib Hashmi in the lead role.
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