EXCLUSIVE | 'Farzi' actress Regina Cassandra on IIFA Awards: I once wore a purple dress and got a lot of flak for it from the Telugu journalists, it was very scandalous because...'

While Regina Cassandra kicked off 2017 with the highly acclaimed Tamil thriller Maanagaram, in 2018, she proved her acting mettle with the Telugu film Awe, which marked her first release of that year. Her second film of the year, Mr Chandramouli hit the screens on Friday (6 July).

The actress made her Bollywood debut with the 2019 Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga. She was also seen in Farzi and performed this year at the IIFA Awards 2024. In an interview with Firstpost, she spoke about her dance performance and her earliest memories of the ceremony.

Edited excerpts from the interview

How was your performance at IIFA?

I’m very critical. I mean something I’d knock off, but it still doesn’t takes hard work. We only did one tech rehearsal with the Nagadha. The Nagadha was supposed to come down at a certain time and did not come down so I missed eight counts of my dance. We anyway worked around it but it started with that and I enjoyed my performance, like I gave it my all, I did miss a few steps here. Matthew came to me and said ‘Don’t worry.’ I’ve done many shows with them before and they always give me the encouragement that I need and in the middle of the dances, they’ll shout and boost you up and I mean it was a really hard performance.

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In fact, like I think mine out of the lot was a very heavy performance. It had a lot of jumping. I didn’t have any breather in between my tracks. It was a bit of a challenge, a good challenge in a way. And by the end of the dance I had a lump in my chest and I couldn’t breathe. I felt queasy but in a good way like I was just happy that I had finished with it. Everyone I’ve met after the dance has just been saying, oh my God, your dance has been really good, your costume was jolly good and I give Jerry, the person who did the costume, all the credit because it was very last minute and he really pulled it off.

So what are your first memories of IIFA?

So when IIFA Utsavam debuted in the south, I co-hosted with Shirish and Navdeep, that is my biggest memory because with IIFA because we did rehearsals, I got to work with the team that did the scripting and they were all Telugu because since it was being hosted in the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad, and I was hosting the Telugu bit of it; I wore a really nice dress. I think it was by Gabrielle McGu. I’m not too sure who the designer was, but it was sort of like a net dress and I got a lot of flak for it from the Telugu journalists. They always looked at me like this girl next door and this sweet girl and I wanted to take my fashion game up a notch. So I had like this purple net dress. Like if you looked at it, you wouldn’t have been wondering what I was wearing under the dress. It was that scandalous.

But the national journalists really really liked it. They wrote about it, they were like okay you know this girl knows what she’s doing sort of a thing. So it was a bit of a mix so that’s my biggest memory.

What about film critics? Are you happy with the reviews that you have received in your performances so far?

When I first entered the industry, I have not come from a family, I mean a family who has a background in cinema or neither have I studied acting. It was all just my experience with drama and dance and the arts in school and college. I was always inclined to towards drama and art and movies and acting in general. In all my plays in school, I would always bag the prominent role. So that was gave me that boost, but I never thought of acting as a career per se. It was not my option at all. It was just something I thought I was good at doing and I got like a ton of opportunities when I was a kid and a teenager.

What are the roles that are lined up for you? What can we expect?

I’m dabbling with a little bit of negative roles. I’ve done that before. I feel like that’s a really nice space for me to work on, so dabbling with that. And also some period films. I really can’t talk about the film right now. I wish I could, but it’ll be a great announcement for people that I can’t wait for it to like be announced. So some period staff, some negative roles, mostly that.