Last Updated:December 20, 2025, 14:04 IST

The Girlfriend director Rahul Ravindran recalls shooting a scene that left Rashmika Mandanna sobbing uncontrollably, and pushed her to confront years of buried hurt.

Rahul Ravindran On Rashmika Mandanna Shooting The ‘Toughest’ Scene In The Girlfriend

Rahul Ravindran’s romantic drama film ‘The Girlfriend’, starring Rashmika Mandanna and Dheekshith Shetty, released in theatres last month and garnered praise from critics and audiences alike. In a recent interview, Rahul Ravindran recalled filming an intense scene in The Girlfriend that left Rashmika broken and ‘sobbing uncontrollably’. He revealed that the sequence pushed her to confront years of buried hurt.

Rahul Ravindran On Rashmika Mandanna Shooting The ‘Toughest’ Scene In The Girlfriend

In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India, The Girlfriend director Rahul Ravindran recalled shooting a scene which he knew would be very difficult the moment he wrote it. “The toughest scene, which was pretty gut-wrenching for both Rashmika and me, was the door sequence. That was the seed of the film. It was something I had seen in my own life,” he said. The scene shows Rashmika’s character Bhooma encountering abuse written across her dorm room door. During the prep, Rahul made a deliberate decision to encourage the actress to think like herself, instead of her character Bhooma.

“For this one scene, I told her I’m not going to ask you to think like Bhooma, I’m going to ask you to think like Rashmika. I asked her to remember every single time someone’s abused you, even random strangers coming and throwing abuses at you,” said Rahul Ravindran.

He said that while Rashmika tends to mask hurt with optimism, he asked her to set that instinct aside and allow the hurt to come out freely. “I told her to set that aside, take all that in and let it come out,” he recalled. Rashmika wasn’t shown the door beforehand, and the first time she saw it was on camera. When the shoot ended, Rahul sensed something was wrong. “I didn’t even say ‘Take Okay’. I just went to the door and went inside,” he recalled.

“She was a mess. She was broken. She was sobbing uncontrollably. For about 20 minutes, she just kept sobbing. Something very deep-seated came out because I asked her to let go. Something she’d been burying for years,” said Rahul Ravindran.

About The Girlfriend

Written and directed by Rahul Ravindran, The Girlfriend follows postgraduate student Bhooma Devi (Rashmika Mandanna), who is deceived into falling in love with Vikram (Dheekshith), a college student. She soon finds herself trapped in a toxic relationship she cannot escape. The film, produced by Dheeraj Mogilneni and Vidya Koppineni, also features Anu Emmanuel and Rao Ramesh in pivotal roles.