Keerthy Suresh’s Hindi filmography is growing, but the National Award-winning actor says she never treated the move north as a volume game. In an interview with PTI, she described her entry into Hindi cinema as something that “fell in place” rather than a race to stack projects.
Her first Hindi release was the 2024 Varun Dhawan-starrer Baby John. The next marker is Akka, a Netflix period crime thriller that begins streaming on October 30. After that comes Raftaar with Rajkummar Rao, which she said should arrive soon.
An unhurried crossover
Suresh has built her reputation across Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films, including Mahanati, the Savitri biopic that won her a National Award, and the 2022 crime drama Saani Kaayidham. She said that body of work gave her room to be selective in Hindi.
“I’m not in a race. It’s not like, ‘I need to do a number of films’; I’m doing what I like,” she said. “This is not something I was running towards. It’s something which fell in place.”
That distinction matters because a Hindi crossover is often framed as a commercial sprint. Suresh is instead positioning it as an extension of the same discernment that has defined her South career.
Akka and the matriarchal frame
Director Dharmaraj Shetty approached Suresh after seeing her in Saani Kaayidham, where she played a police constable seeking revenge after a caste-based attack. In Akka, she plays Bhavani, one of two women—alongside Radhika Apte’s Rudra—whose rivalries shape power in the fictional 1980s kingdom of Pernuru.
Suresh said the show is not simply a two-woman conflict but a larger matriarchal society, a world she called “very different” and challenging. The ensemble includes Tanvi Azmi, Mahesh Manjrekar, Anshuman Pushkar and Monica Panwar, and the project is produced by YRF Entertainment.
- 2024: Baby John, Hindi debut with Varun Dhawan.
- October 30: Akka, Netflix series with Radhika Apte.
- Next: Raftaar with Rajkummar Rao.
Why the framing matters
Suresh does not see a clear difference in how Hindi and South industries write women now. She recalled starting in male-led films with little room, and said Mahanati was the opportunity that changed her arc. Her recent release Dorothy, which explores LGBTQ themes, earned acclaim at TIFF and reinforced her interest in change-making cinema.
For Hindi film audiences, Akka is a useful test: a South actor with awards and streaming credibility anchoring a period world built around women. If the show works, it could strengthen the case for casting beyond language-industry assumptions—and for building Hindi slates slowly, on role quality rather than release volume.
Source: DT Next
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