Samantha opens up about her fight with myositis. (Photo: Twitter/Samantha Ruth Prabhu)Ahead of the release of Yashoda, Samantha Ruth Prabhu kicked off movie promotions with a series of media interactions. On Monday, she posted on her social media pages about the importance of ‘showing up’ no matter how hard life could get. “Shower, Shave, Show up,” Samantha said in her post.
Samantha is suffering from an auto-immune disease called myositis. A couple of weeks ago, she revealed her struggle with the illness. She’s not letting her health problems come in the way of her professional commitments. While she always enlisted the services of voice artists for dubbing her lines in movies, she wanted to change that practice for this film.
“For me, dubbing in Telugu was a bit difficult as I come from Chennai. Every artist wants to dub for themselves after giving everything to their performance. I always had that wish but now I have also developed confidence about my hold on the Telugu language. I worked on it,” Samantha said in an interview with celebrity TV anchor Suma.
But, Samantha’s health condition and her ongoing treatment added to her challenges. “It was difficult time for me when I did the dubbing for Yashoda. Given that the release date was announced already, I had to dub in a very difficult health condition. But, I’m a bit adamant. Once I committed to dub for myself, I wanted to do it. I’m glad I did it,” she added.
In Yashoda, she plays a surrogate mother who fights back a crime syndicate of medical professionals. And she noted that she could identify with the struggles of Yashoda. “When I select a character naturally I would have seen something of me in it. Yashoda comes from humble beginnings with big dreams. I’m also like that. She is determined just like me. In this film, Yashoda faces a lot of difficulties and fights and survives them. I’m right now in a difficult position. I hope to survive as well,” she added.
Samantha broke down while talking about her experience with her illness. “Some days are good, and some days are bad. There are days when I feel like I can’t take one more step further. And there are days when I look back, I feel surprised that I have come so far. I’m here to fight. I’m not the only one, I know that. There are a lot of people who are fighting many battles. We win in the end,” she added.
In a lighter vein, Samantha also ridiculed a few news headlines that presented her condition grimmer than it actually was. “I also saw a lot of articles saying that my condition was life-threatening. The stage I’m in is not life-threatening. It’s difficult, but I’m here to fight. At least for the time being, I’m not going to die,” she quipped.
Yashoda is written and directed by filmmaker duo Hari Shankar and Harish Narayan. The film also stars Unni Mukandan, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, Rao Ramesh, Murali Sharma, Sampath Raj, Shatru, Madhurima, Kalpika Ganesh, Divya Sripada and Priyanka Sharma. It’s due in cinemas this Friday.