Tamannaah Bhatia defends being objectified in Baahubali The Beginning: ‘People use shame and guilt to control you’

In the interview with The Lallantop, the actor continued, “We’re so repressed. We look at the purest of things with such a pathetic gaze. That perspective makes us feel ashamed of that aspect of our lives, that we’ve to hide it, that we can’t discuss it, or we can’t be open about that conversation. People make you feel wrong, but this is the most basic of processes.”

She also hailed Rajamouli’s vision for that scene and the arc of her character. “When Rajamouli sir was explaining that entire sequence to me, he was like, ‘She’s that divine feminine being who’s wounded. She’s beautiful, feminine, and wants to be loved. But she’s gone through so many hardships in life that she feels she has to push everyone away. She can’t let anyone inside because she feels they’ll take advantage of her. So she holds boundaries. But there’s a young man who comes and is merely trying to woo her to make her see how beautiful she is.”

Tamannaah claims her character finds herself in that sequence through Shiva’s help. “A filmmaker wants to show you something beautiful. But you see something else only. I don’t think I can take the burden of that. As a creative person, I don’t think it was ‘the rape of Avantika.’ I think it was Avantika finding herself through a young man who’s wooing her,” added Tamannaah.

She also talked about how physically gruelling her part was in the franchise. “I got the least time for training because I was pretty much the last part of the cast to come onboard. In fact, I remember they got me to the set one day and said, ‘Now, you do sword fighting.’ And I’d never even held a sword before that. So I remember going to Prabhas and asking him how to do it. So he actually taught me the technique and I practised in the middle of the night,” recalled Tamannaah.

Tamannaah also addressed the question that was on the audience’s minds between Baahubali: The Beginning and its 2017 sequel Baahubali: The Conclusion — Why did Katappa kill Baahubali? At the end of the first part, Baahubali’s (Prabhas) loyal uncle Katappa (Sathyaraj) kills him with a sword, much to everyone’s shock. She revealed she was initially as clueless as the rest of the world.

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“Actually, I didn’t know it for some time because I hadn’t shot for the second part till then. So I had no clue. But after some time, somebody told me. People used to keep asking me, but I didn’t disclose it,” admitted Tamannaah, adding, “When I signed the film, I wasn’t in the second part at all. But since the first film had such a huge impact, they wanted me to come back in the second part too.”