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Royalty Kanihaa plays a queen in ‘Pazhassi Raja.’

Shooting for movies has been like a vacation for Kanihaa. Literally. When she started getting offers while studying mechanical engineering at BITS, Pilani, she told the directors that she would act only during the holidays.

Now that she has completed her studies and a CAD project for Larsen & Tourbo, who also offered her a job, she no longer has to look up her college calendar before signing up for a project she likes. Not that the former Miss Chennai is on a signing spree. She says she wants to do quality cinema, like ‘Pazhassi Raja,’ one of the most talked-about films in Malayalam of late. It is a role she is excited about. “It’s the role of a lifetime,” she says.

But it took the director, Hariharan, quite a while to decide that Kanihaa was suited for the role of Kaitheri Makkom. The first time Hariharan saw her, she was dressed in a jeans and tee-shirt. Her hair was in a ponytail.

She looked more like a kid than the queen he was searching for.

For her next meeting with Hariharan, she carried a CD of ‘Varavalu,’ the Tamil film she did with Ajith in which she dresses up as a queen for a song sequence. Hariharan asked her to come back for a costume trial.

“A week later, he offered me the role of the queen in ‘Pazhassi Raja.’ It took 20 days and three meetings for him to be absolutely sure that I could indeed do justice to the role of Kaitheri Makkom. I didn’t even have to pause for a second before saying yes,” says Kanihaa on the sets of ‘Pazhassi Raj,’ near St. Angelo’s Fort in Kannur.

She is confident that she will be noticed in ‘Pazhassi Raja.’ “Even if I don’t do another Malayalam film, I am sure people would still be talking about ‘Pazhassi Raja’ 10 years later, as they now do of ‘Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha.’ I want to work in more Malayalam films. I am fond of films such as ‘Moonnam Pakkam’ and ‘Achuvinte Amma.’

“The best thing about Malayalam cinema is that the film has a story and the actors are all talented. The films are realistic. I wasn’t aware of how important ‘Pazhassi Raja’ was when I landed the role. All I knew was that Hariharan is a widely respected director. It was only when I googled up ‘Pazhassi Raja’ that I realised that it was such a big film,” she says.

‘Pazhassi Raja’ has been a great learning experience for her, she explains.

“It has been like going to school. I have been learning so many things, like eye movement, proper gestures. And working with someone like Mammootty, whose films I have grown up watching, is an enriching experience. He often corrects me when I go wrong.”

Kanihaa, however, cannot sign another Malayalam film before the release of ‘Pazhassi Raja.’

“But I don’t mind that; this film is worth the wait. And I don’t regret the fact that I have had to miss out on films in other languages because of ‘Pazhassi Raja,’” explains Kanihaa, whose first film in Malayalam, ‘Ennittum,’ last year, made little impact.

She has recently completed a Kannada film with Ravichandran and is considering a few offers in Tamil. Her last release in Tamil was ‘Sivaji,’ in which she had dubbed for Shriya’s voice in the film. “I had also dubbed for Sada in ‘Anniyan.’ Although I have no plans to become a dubbing artiste, I feel if you have a good voice why not flaunt it.”

Kanihaa had no plans to join the entertainment industry until she competed in the Miss Chennai show when a contestant withdrew at the last minute.

“But I am happy that I am in films; otherwise I would have been just another unknown engineer. And I have enjoyed doing films such as ‘Five Star,’ which was my first film, ‘Varalaru,’ ‘Aethiree,’ ‘Dancer,’ ‘Annavaru’ (Kannada) and ‘Autograph.’”

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