There’s an easy charm that takes centre stage when you converse with Raashii Khanna. She might initially come across as having a restrained personality but the minute she’s comfortable with you, she starts becoming more and more bubbly and her effervescence rubs off on you as well. Being a Delhiite, she loves to gossip and to eat. She groans she has to put curbs on both being an actress. While she’s easy and candid when it comes to questions pertaining to her profession, she draws a line when it comes to personal stuff, so no questions on her love life, please.

She grabbed eyeballs with her layered character in the OTT show Rudra: The Edge Of Darkness, where she was seen alongside Ajay Devgn. Making quite a memorable entry in the OTT space, her quirky character was much appreciated by the masses and the critics alike. 2023 looks exciting for her, not only does she have Raj and DK’s crime thriller Farzi in her kitty alongside Shahid Kapoor and Vijay Sethupathi, but she also has Yodha with Sidharth Malhotra under the Dharma Productions banner, which the actress quips is a dream come true.

While Rudra has been a complete game changer for her, she says that she didn’t relate at all to her character, Dr. Aliyah Choksi. Which is precisely why it was important for her to audition and convince everyone of her calibre. “I was ready to give auditions for certain kinds of roles which people thought weren’t my type. When you see me in Rudra, you will see my face and wonder, ‘How will she play a psychopath?’ But then I was like, ‘You know, I am ready to audition for this to dispel such myths,’.” She’s all about finding her depth as an actor and has no qualms about giving multiple auditions.

Speaking of how much fun she is having juggling characters who are so dissimilar to her own self, she elaborates on her role as Megha in Farzi. “When you now see Megha in Farzi, you will see a completely different side of me. Megha is a character who is extremely ambitious. If she wants something, she will go get it, she will not care about authority or anything,” she says.

Saying yes to working with Raj and DK was a no-brainer, given their body of work. She is grateful to them for giving her such a layered character as Megha. She says women don’t have it easy even today. Despite all the progress it’s still a man’s world and says her female fans would surely relate to her character. “So all that a modern woman faces, you will see through Megha. She is also a little grey. But she is still relatable, so every woman will probably love it. I would like to add that people are going to celebrate each big and small victory of hers and root for her. There is a lot of depth and layers to Megha and thanks to my directors, I was able to safely navigate everything,” she beams.

Not many people know that she signed Farzi way before Rudra. She shares, “I first signed Farzi and then Rudra happened. So technically, this was the first thing on OTT that I signed. And obviously, it was a whole new arena when it came to me. It was a Raj and DK show, it had Shahid and Vijay Sethupathi so I was like, ‘I don’t even know what’s in it, but I am for it.’ Divulging the initial process of the Raj and DK series, she adds, “Raj and DK sir had seen some old auditions of mine and a scene from one of my films called Tholi Prema, which had done well in Telugu, and they thought, ‘This is our Megha’ and that was it, I was onboard. And then I got to do Rudra and Yodha.”

She wants to push the envelope with every outing and not cruise by on her good looks alone. And hence, Raj and DK’s no-nonsense approach suited her. “They told me and said that they didn’t want any makeup on my face. And they didn’t want my hair to be nicely done because I wasn’t a heroine in this. I’m okay with playing any kind of character that, as an actor, puts me out of my comfort zone. And I don’t care about the way I look because I think I have done that enough,” she maintains. Having actors of the calibre of Shahid Kapoor and Vijay Sethupathi on the sets could have been intimidating. However, she laughs that off and talks about how comfortable they both made her feel. “Shahid is funny in an obvious way, he is extremely entertaining. Sethupathi sir has this dry sense of humour. That is something he brings to his character too in the series.”

Raashii, who’s originally from Delhi, started her career down South. She initially had plans to become an IAS officer but destiny carved another path for her. In 2013, she made her Bollywood debut with a short but impactful role in Madras Cafe, where she worked with John Abraham. Subsequently, she got busy down South and made her presence felt with the Telugu film Oohalu Gusagusalade (2014), Malayalam film Villain (2017), and Tamil film Imaikkaa Nodigal (2018). The actress says that while she initially did suffer from a culture shock, later on she understood that there’s a language of cinema which binds all film work everywhere on earth. One just has to go with the flow and trust in the process. “Tamil people have a different culture, Telugu-speaking people have a different culture. You have to learn about it to convincingly play a girl from Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh. But that’s just one aspect. The other is to follow the director’s vision as he’s the captain of the ship. You have to let go of your inhibitions. You have to forget the fact that you’re a North Indian and just be the character. It isn’t easy at first but practice makes perfect, as they say.”

She says she’s thankful of the fact that her profession has helped her get a glimpse of the various cultures prevalent in our country. It has made her more tolerant, more accepting as a person. Having seen unity in diversity first hand, she says she’s proud to be an Indian citizen. “It’s humbling to know that despite our differences, we’ve continued to grow together as one. There’s so much we can learn and teach each other and this process, which has been going on since ages, is what makes us unique. And thanks to being an actor, I was able to experience it first hand,” she gushes.

She reveals that she has a Tamil film and three Telugu films in the pipeline. She is open to more opportunities in the Hindi industry as well. “When I look back and see how my career flourished, I of course owe a lot to my hard work but it was also accompanied by destiny. It gives me a sense of comfort and pride that I’ve made it despite being a complete outsider. I asked the Universe for a chance to follow my dreams and it fulfilled my wish.”