Janhvi Kapoor memorised her Telugu lines, walked into a scene she was terrified of, and came out the other side with a story she says she will pass on to her children. In a recent interview, Janhvi reflected on Peddi, the director she trusted completely, and what Sridevi taught her without ever meaning to.

Buchi Babu Sana made his directorial debut with Uppena in 2021, which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Telugu. For Janhvi Kapoor, that track record mattered. When the question of creative control came up during an interaction with Beyond the Brief by District Movies, she was clear about where the final word rests. “The director obviously gets the final word because he is the one that says cut. And especially when it is a director like Buchi Babu Sana, who has a track record of making such amazing rooted work like Uppena,” said Janhvi.

In Peddi, set against the backdrop of 1980s rural Andhra Pradesh, the actor plays a character named Achiyyamma in a story about a spirited villager who unites his community through sports to defend their pride against a powerful rival. It is a significant departure from anything she has played before, and she knew it going in.

One of the most striking moments Janhvi Kapoor described from the shoot was not a technically demanding scene but a deeply human one. There were two instances in the film where her character addresses a large crowd. The lines were in Telugu, a language she does not speak natively, and she had memorised the monologue to deliver on set.

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“When I delivered my monologue, everyone in the crowd started clapping,” she said, adding, “because I think even they were surprised that I mugged up the lines and performed it. So that was a very tangible visual validation.”

Janhvi Kapoor has spoken before about growing up in the shadow of Sridevi’s extraordinary dedication to her craft. Sridevi worked across Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, and Kannada films over a career that spanned five decades. The stories that circulated about her on-set commitment became part of the family mythology that Janhvi grew up with.

“I’ve grown up on stories of my mother saying, ‘Oh, I shot this rain song with a 104 fever’ or ‘danced until my feet bled.’ I’ve sort of always glorified that work ethic and tried to stick by it,” she said.

What is new now is that Janhvi Kapoor is beginning to accumulate her own versions of those stories. “I’ve collected some such stories of myself now that I’ll be happy to pass on to my kids,” she said. There is something quietly significant in that. It is the first time she has spoken about that inheritance not as something she is trying to live up to, but as something she is beginning to build for herself.

When asked whether there was a moment in Peddi when she watched herself on screen and did not quite recognise the person she was seeing, Janhvi Kapoor pointed to her entry scene. “I think in my entry scene in Peddi, because I was so nervous, as it was a departure from all the characters that I played. I was like, will I be able to pull it off? But when I see the scene now, I think it is pretty cool,” she said.

Peddi, directed by Buchi Babu Sana, released on June 4. It also stars Ram Charan, Shivarajkumar, Jagapathi Babu, and Divyendu Sharma in pivotal roles.