Raj & DK Explains Why Samantha Was Brown-faced In The Family man 2

One of the pinnacles in ‘The Family man 2’ series is the character Raji played by Samantha Akkineni. Her brilliant portrayal as Sri Lankan Tamil liberation fighter on a suicide mission received laurels in a gigantic figure. However, immense outrage spawned over Samantha’s made up brown-face by a section of the Internet.

The makers of the series, Raj & DK explained the reason behind choosing Samantha’s brown skin tone. They said the actress character demanded her to be fit as she’s a military person. “As responsible filmmakers, we had an idea not to propagate any context of beauty or race. It was as simple as what the character demanded,” they said.

“Firstly, this whole thing comes in the context of beauty when you’re trying to say dark skin is not beautiful and fair skin is beautiful… This is not that context. There is no context of skin beauty in this. We are all shades of brown. Now, the idea is that if each one is a shade of brown, so it’s not about getting a different race to play this (character). It’s not a race thing either,” Raj said during the interview.

He further explained that the character Raji do not have enough time to worry about self-care. “Here we are trying to get the character of Raji right. We want her to speak it, we want her to look it, we want her to be that action girl who can land the punch, someone who can be physically fit and take on a guy double her size. That’s our main challenge. So if you look at what she wears… She’s a soldier, she’s a weather-beaten girl, there’s no time for worrying about self-care. If you’re a soldier in the Himalayas, your face is going to be red, that’s the makeup.”

Samantha vigorously trained herself for more than 3 months to get into the skin of Raji. “I had to look a certain way, given her field of experiences and that make-up and costume were just one aspect of it,” said DK. Samantha went on to learn the particular dialect of Tamil which is uncommon in Tamil Nadu and martial arts to make her action scenes easier. “Now add to that the concept of hair, makeup and costume, that is a complete character that we are presenting. This is the character of Raji; she looks a certain way, she walks a certain way, and she’s a killing machine, and that’s all there is to it,” DK added.

Talking about brown-facing the lead characters in Bollywood, we had Hrithik Roshan who went two shades darker for his character in Super 30, Bhumi Pednekar for Bala, Alia Bhatt in Udtaa Punjab, Ranveer Singh in Gully Boy, and Sayani Gupta in Article 15. Amid the controversies, Raj and DK’s indispensable explanation might help bring in clarification to those who are concerned. Kudos to them as these ideal filmmakers did not shrug off any responsibility from the reality they have picturized and represented.