Kushboo Sundar Says Big Screen Is Still About The Khans: ‘I’m Not Going To Mince Words …’ | Exclusive
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Kushboo Sundar asserts not every women-led stories will become as big as Aranmanai 4 and that theatres still belongs to the Khans.
Nayanthara’s Mookuthi Amman 2 is being directed by Kushboo’s husband Sundar C.
For people in Tamil Nadu, Kushboo Sundar is an icon for women empowerment. Even during her campaigns as a politician, she has batted for the women’s rights and upliftment in the state. In the last few years, her husband, actor-director Sundar C, have been at the forefront of helming women-led films that grabbed a lot of attention. His 2024 directorial outing Aranmanai 4 was produced by Kushboo and headlined by Tamannaah Bhatia and Raashii Khanna. It defined every norm in the book and clocked more Rs 100 crore at the box office.
The shoot of Sundar’s next directorial project, Mookuthi Amman 2, began recently and once again is being headlined by two women – Nayanthara and Regina Cassandra. At the muhurat ceremony of the film held in Chennai on Thursday (March 6), News18 Showsha exclusively caught up with Kushboo – as she graced the event to show support to her husband – who got candid about how women-led cinema still has a long way to go and how it will take more than the success of one Aranmanai 4 to bring about change.
She tells us, “No, such films don’t have the room to become blockbusters all the time. I’m not going to mince my words and say that times have changed. We’ve to accept things. Women-oriented films like Aranmanai 4 and Mookuthi Amman 2 will only come once in a while.” Admitting that the theatrical space is still largely dominated by the likes of Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, she asserts, “The big screen is about the Khans, the superstars and Ulaganayagan still. We still have a long way to go.”
However, Kushboo lauds those who’ve forayed into the streaming space and reveals that she too is looking forward to make her OTT debut soon. “It’s very heartening to see Dimple Kapadia play different kinds of roles. With OTT platforms now, women have a lot more space to explore. Be it Darlings, City Of Dreams, Dabba Cartel or Huma Qureshi’s Maharani, it gave a lot of scope to women actors to really explore and do the kind of work they couldn’t think of doing on the big screen. But rather than complaining, we, as women actors, need to find the right balance,” she points out.
In Kushboo’s words, ‘women should exercise their right to make a choice’ and not judge themselves for wanting to be a part of commercial potboilers either. Referring to how raising one’s voice and making a choice can come across as a ‘jhamela’, she remarks, “It’s nice to be part of a jhamela once in a while and let yourself be a part of a completely non-sensical film where you can just laugh your guts out and say that you want to enjoy yourself. Rather than waiting to do only content-driven cinema, you should be able to make a choice to do a film where you’ve two songs and two scenes but give your best to that. That’s my belief as an artist.”