Lakshmi Manchu’s fluency in Hindi reflects her new life as a Mumbaikar. Two years ago, she relocated from Hyderabad to Mumbai with her daughter Vidya Nirvana, driven by a desire for change and personal growth. “I love to explore, travel, and needed a different scene for myself and my child. Here, I feel I have a life beyond work. I visit art galleries, immerse myself in the cultural scene. There’s so much more to life here than just cinema,” she shares.
Yet, cinema remains central to Lakshmi’s life. She is gearing up for her latest Telugu release, Daksha: The Deadly Conspiracy, a psychological medical thriller co-starring her father, Mohan Babu. Producing a film with her father came with unique challenges. “Pulling the daddy card worked,” she laughs. “Our man doesn’t work after 6 pm, but I kept him on set till 12:12 am for the climax. I pushed his boundaries, just as he pushed mine during our scenes together.”
For Lakshmi, choosing genres is about freshness and relevance. “We’ve seen horror comedies repeated countless times. Medical thrillers resonate with today’s world — on one hand, there are miracles, on the other, forces trying to destroy them.” She emphasizes that Telugu cinema’s current strength lies in originality. “We’ve finally embraced our own stories instead of relying on remakes. We make more films than Bollywood combined because our love for cinema is unmatched.”
Lakshmi is also vocal about the gender gap in the industry. “Being a woman means constantly proving yourself twice as hard. Some of the biggest female superstars — Waheeda Rahman, Rekha, Sridevi, Jayaprada — were Telugu women. We once exported a genre; now we are mostly importing. The patriarchy baffles me.”
She hasn’t shied away from controversy either. Lakshmi recently appeared before the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a money-laundering probe involving Rana Daggubati and Vijay Deverakonda. True to her candid nature, she remarks, “I find it humorous that the government comes to the tail end of a person. Just because you make headlines, you become a scapegoat. Gaming apps are played all over the world, so why target us? At least my friends joke that now everyone thinks I have a lot of money!”
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