Incredible rise of Bengaluru girl Nikki

A career in acting was just a vague idea in Nikki Galrani’s mind, and she had never really planned it. But her career trajectory in the last three-and-a-half years is incredible. Nikki, who stepped into tinsel town in 2017, is already 27 films old. 

She has made a name for herself in four south Indian film industries, and she surprises us by saying that she has not taken a single day off from work.”I feel proud that I worked hard and pushed myself to do better,” she says.

O Premave, her fourth film in Kannada, has faced many delays. The audio launch for this film was held last week, and the actor could not attend it. Nikki says that she had been busy shooting round the clock: “I am looking forward to four films of mine releasing in the coming months. I have been shuttling between sets. I just completed shooting for Kalakalappu 2 and will join the sets of Charlie Chaplin 2 from Monday. It is a film with Prabhudheva and the team is now in their second schedule,” says Nikki, adding, “When it is with Prabhu, there has to be dancing, and I hope to shake a leg with him.”

She seems to be binging on sequels, but Nikki says that she did not do that consciously. The filmmakers, she says, choose to have her in part two of the series. “But these sequels have nothing to do with the earlier stories, each is a fresh subject,” she says.

In Kannada, she has done three films - Ajith, Jamboo Savari and Siddhratha -- and she promises to be back very soon. “Bengaluru is home to me, my parents still live there. So being in the Kannada industry is like being home, and I will be more than happy to return to work there,” says Nikki, who does not believe in categorising her work according to languages. “Till date, I have picked films for their content and I look forward to that in Kannada too. I have been offered a handful of good films, but I just couldn’t work out the dates, due to prior commitments. But filmmakers in Karnataka have not forgotten me and they still address me as the Bengaluru girl. I won’t let them forget me either,” she says.