Veteran lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar and actor Madhoo showed their support to Rashmika Mandanna, who faced backlash over her Hindi pronunciation in the recent premiere of Koffee With Karan. In the show, the actor spoke about being trolled for her accent.
Javed Akhtar took to twitter supporting Rashmika Mandanna regarding her South Indian accent. He questioned the tendency to ridicule one's accent. "This fake and baseless linguistic superiority is not acceptable," he wrote in his twitter post. He previously referred to Rashmika as a Tamil actor, to which social media users pointed out her Kannada bakground. He acknowledged the error and confirmed that his support remains unchanged.
Madhoo, meanwhile, shared a video on Instagram defending Rashmika for gracefully owning her South Indian accent. "I recently saw Rashmika Mandanna's show Koffee With Karan and the way she dealt with her accent criticism, I just loved it. She laughs about it, she accepts it, she owns it, calls herself a South Indian and says,' So, I am a South Indian, and I have a South Indian accent.' And she's so cool about it, and I am really in love with that," said actor Madhoo.
Madhoo also shared about how she felt when she joined Hindi cinema industry. She said she was afraid of being judged for being South Indian and worked hard to improve her hindi pronunciation. "Many, many years ago, when I became a Hindi film actor, I was afraid of the judgements I was getting, and thought I would get, for being a South Indian. I worked harder and harder. I tried to get an Urdu teacher and betterd myself in Hindi, doing anything and everything so that I wouldn't get caught out because of my accent," she said.
Madhoo revealed that it took her several decades to reach a point where she could comfortably accept her accent. She also mentioned that intially she would be proud when someone said that her Hindi accent is even better than a Hindi speaker, but today is proud of her being a South Indian.
She praised Rashmika for displaying that confidence much earlier in her career. Rashmika, who has established herself in various cinema, has frequently worked across linguistic boundaries. In Ranabaali, she played alongside her husband Vijay Deverakonda. She was also seen in Cocktail 2. Her upcoming film, Mysaa, an action thriller is set to release on November 27 and is also working on Atlee's and Allu Arjun's Raaka featuring Deepika Padukone as the lead.