In 2011, Tamil actor and director Raghava Lawrence made a film that shattered box office records and was such a success that it spawned remakes in various languages. We are talking about Kanchana, also sometimes called Muni 2: Kanchana. It was a spiritual sequel to Raghava’s earlier film Muni, although the plots were not connected. The movie saw some great performances from Raghava who is shown possessed by the spirit of a deceased transgender woman and from R Sarathkumar who plays the transgender woman in question.
However, one may also remember the character of Geetha, who played the adopted daughter of R Sarathkumar’s character. Shown to be transgender as well, Geetha’s character was played by real-life transgender actress Priya.
Priya also put up a commendable performance and people were expecting to see more of her in upcoming films. However, that did not happen and in a recent interview with a YouTube channel, Priya said that working in Kanchana had been the biggest mistake of her life.
She said that she was living a life typical of common transgenders until she was offered the film. After the movie was released, she said that it became difficult for her to get a job anywhere and people thought she already had a lot of money. She also did not get any further roles in movies as her gender identity would allow her to play only transgender characters. Priya further said that life was going fine for her but Kanchana happened and ruined it.
Kanchana was remade into several languages, even outside the borders of our country. The film has been remade several times, including in Kannada as Kalpana, in Sinhala Sri Lanka as Maya, in Bengali Bangladesh as Mayabini and Hindi as Laxmii. Lawrence also acted as screenwriter on Kalpana, while directing and co-writing Laxmii.
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