Rashmika: ‘Kindness is not weakness’ amid trolling

Rashmika Mandanna has heard the label: her public kindness, some say, is just ‘overacting.’ Ahead of the release of Ranabaali, she made her position plain—she is not changing to please strangers on the internet.

Speaking with interviewer Keerthika Govindhasamy on her YouTube channel, Rashmika was asked directly about the trolling. She said kindness is a choice she makes because negativity already circulates widely, and she would rather add something positive.

Personally, I feel that kindness is not weakness

she said, according to India Today.

Her warmth is not a performance

Rashmika added that the personality people see is simply who she is. ‘I don’t have to pretend to do this; this is real. I can’t fake it to make someone happy,’ she said. She pointed out that not everyone is everyone’s cup of tea, but her way of being keeps the people who actually know her—family, friends and well-wishers—happy.

The ‘too kind’ label is a strange bind for a star. Be warm in public and some viewers call it an act; be guarded and the same space may call you arrogant. Rashmika’s answer refuses that trap: she is comfortable with how she comes across, and the audience can take it or leave it.

Vijay Deverakonda sees a manufactured narrative

Vijay Deverakonda, who joined the conversation, said the issue is bigger than Rashmika. In his view, many strong opinions about actors and politicians are created rather than earned.

‘You can only have feelings for someone when you have met them or spent some time with them,’ he said. ‘When you haven’t even met the person, how can you have such a strong opinion on their personality?’

He described a social media machinery that can set a narrative. When a section decides to create an opinion about someone, it can run multiple accounts, repeat the claim and make that view look like consensus. The result is that a tag—’too nice,’ ‘fake,’ ‘overacting’—can attach itself to a person faster than any correction can.

The film behind the headlines

The exchange arrives just before Ranabaali, which opens on October 16. Directed by Rahul Sankrityan, the large-scale action drama is set in the 19th century and draws inspiration from the Great Madras famine that unfolded between 1854 and 1878. Rashmika plays Jayamma, a pivotal character, while Arnold Vosloo plays Sir Theodore Hector. Ajay-Atul have composed the music, and the film is expected to release in multiple languages.

For fans, the interview offers a simple framework:

• Watch whether an opinion about a star is yours or one you inherited from a feed.
• Remember that repetition is not the same as truth.
• Separate a person’s public warmth from a manufactured storyline about them.

What to take from the exchange

Vijay’s description of a manufactured narrative is a useful test beyond cinema. If you have never met someone, a very strong opinion about their personality probably came from somewhere else—a clipped video, a meme, a trending hashtag. That does not mean every criticism is false. It does mean the volume can be amplified by people who decide on the story first and collect evidence later.

Rashmika’s response, meanwhile, is simpler: kindness is not weakness, and she has no plans to perform a different version of herself. For an audience that consumes both the films and the gossip around them, that is a rare line to hold.

Source: India Today