Shraddha Srinath had to contend with a unique problem throughout her shooting for her upcoming film, Richie. Much of the shooting occurred in Tuticorin, and she had originally thought it would be a piece of cake, until she decided to go for a leisurely walk along the beach, which was close to the sets. “Suddenly, the stench of fish from the market hit me hard. I am a non-vegetarian, but I have never really liked fish. The smell affected me so much that I started feeling nauseous. I hurried back to the shooting spot,” she says.
She says there’s a history to her aversion. “I think it goes back to my childhood. As a kid, when I was eating a prawn, it got stuck in my throat. I think my dislike for seafood is perhaps due to that childhood incident.”
As luck would have it, Shraddha, who plays a journalist in Richie, had to put up with the smell of fish all through the shoot which happened extensively along the coastline.
But there were positives too. “I tried karakuzhambu for the first time, on the recommendation of director Gautham Ramachandran. It was delectable.”
The film also got her meeting Nivin Pauly, her co-star in the film and a long-term favourite. The meeting itself didn’t go as planned. The unit had started shooting in a house in Courtallam. Shraddha, who was sitting in the backyard of the house, was learning her lines, when someone who looked ‘a lot like Nivin Pauly’ waved at her. “I looked up from my script, and saw the man smiling at me as he passed by. But as Nivin wasn’t due for the shoot that day, I thought I’d probably imagined the whole thing, or that it was someone else. It was all surreal. So, instead of greeting him, I just turned around and began learning my lines,” she laughs.
It was only later when the director asked her to meet Nivin that Shraddha learn that she had actually seen the actor.
“It was an overwhelming experience as I’ve always been a big admirer of him. But I managed to keep cool and speak like a professional. I won’t be forgetting the shooting experience of Richie for more reasons than one.”