Nandita Swetha is playing a cop in her next film, Vanangamudi, that's being directed by Selva. She says she prepped for six months to play the role. The first day she donned her cop uniform was for the shoot of the film's climax at a hospital in Chennai that was teeming with crew members, including Arvind Swami, Simran, Thambi Ramaiah and others. As Nandita got off her caravan, she was self-conscious of how she looked in the uniform. Having generally played girl-next-door roles in her career, she was apprehensive of how onlookers would react to this new look. She had, for the last six months, worked out at the gym for an average of four hours a day, and done yoga and aerobics too. "When director Selva and the unit complimented me, I was so relieved," she says.

Yet all the preparation didn't help her when she was given a gun and asked to pretend to shoot two people for an action sequence. "I jumped in alarm to hear the deafening sound when I pulled the trigger. Everyone around me started laughing at my reaction and I ended up laughing too," she says.

For someone who has played only homely characters so far, Nandita has gone glam for a pub song in Vanangamudi. She took belly dancing classes for the song apparently. On the sets, she could see that the onlookers were curious. They had, after all, seen her only as the girl next door, and it was new that she was wearing a sleeveless black costume and a curly wig to boot. The song had her dance with Arvind Swami. "But again, thankfully, things went well," she says.