Samantha Ruth Prabhu had to smile for fan pictures hours after her father passed away: ‘No normal person would be expected to do that’

Explaining her reason behind not saying no to pictures, Samantha shared, “The thing is if you just say ‘no’, they don’t know what state you are in… it takes a lot of courage to walk up to someone and ask them to take a picture with you. So I didn’t want to say no and upset them.” Samantha’s situation also made her think the setbacks of her profession and being a public figure. She said, “When I was smiling for these pictures, it hit me, no normal person would be expected to smile on the day their dad died. It is absolutely another world.”

ALSO READ | Samantha Ruth Prabhu was in a ‘never ending abyss’ after her health, marital crisis: ‘Had the worst possible thoughts, nothing was working’

Samantha Ruth Prabhu’s father, Joseph Prabhu, passed away in November. After his death, she took to her Instagram Stories to share a special note for her father, which read, “Until we meet again, Dad.” Previously, she had spoken about sharing a difficult relationship with her father. In an interview with Hindustan Times, Samantha shared, “I had a particularly difficult relationship with my father.”

She added, “Growing up, I had to fight for validation. My father was…most Indian parents are like that; they think they are protecting you. My father has actually told me ‘you are actually not that smart’, ‘this is just the standard of Indian education that even you can get the 1st rank’. I really believed that I am not smart, not good enough. So when my first movie – Ye Maaya Chesave – released and it became a blockbuster, people showering all this praise on me. But I was used to fighting for validation and for someone to say something good about me. I didn’t know how to accept it because I was not used to it.”