Creators of Family Man 2 Dismiss The Criticism Of Samantha Akkineni's Brown Face

Samantha Akkineni brown face: The Family Man 2 creators Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK dismissed all criticism for painting actor Samantha Akkineni in brown face for the role of Raji in the series.

Samantha Akkineni brown face: what is the talk all about?

In the second season of Amazon Prime's The Family Man, actor Samantha Akkineni has been made to appear several shades darker to fit into her character. She plays the role of Raji aka Rajyalakshmi Sekaran, a Tamil Rebel. This gave rise to a lot of criticism and Twitter flooded with outrage from Netizens against this move.

Apart from brown face on samantha family man 2 is acceptable

— Agila ulaga young superstar ⭐⭐ (@TR_lite1) June 5, 2021

Not taking away from any ones performance in Family man...but did they really have to do a brown face?

— Mr. Tamborine Man (@RegularRam) June 6, 2021

Yaa Family Man is all okay and yaa JK and Umayal bonding over similar pronunciations in Marathi and Tamil is okay and yaa Sri Lankan Tamil sounds better to my ears but brown-face Samantha? What was the need? Tchah.

— श्रेया | Shreya (@iconohclast) June 5, 2021

Creators dismiss Samantha brown face criticism

The creators of the web series, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK revealed in an interview that every decision was made in service of the character. They added that they were responsible filmmakers.

Raj said to Film Companion, "This whole thing comes in context of beauty, when you're trying to say dark skin is not beautiful and fair skin is beautiful. This is not that context". He added that there was no context of skin beauty in this and that we are all shades of brown. "Now, the idea is that if each one is a shade of brown, so it's not about getting a different race to play this (character). It's not a race thing either," he said.

He continued saying that these were the two contexts where it should be looked down upon, and that's where the main problem was. "It's not like we are irresponsible filmmakers, to propagate something of that kind," the creator emphasised.

All about Raji

Raj also opened up about Akkineni's character, Raji. He said that they tried to get the character right. They wanted her to be real in terms of speech and appearance. They demanded her to be the action girl who can land the punch, someone who can be physically fit and take on a man double her size. She is a soldier, a weather-beaten girl who has no time for self care. "If you're a soldier in the Himalayas, your face is going  to red, that's the makeup," he added.

DK said that the character needed her to be fit because she is a military person. Akkineni trained for three months and got the biceps. She learned martial arts from the choreographer and a particular dialect of Tamil that is different from what she is used to speaking. "Now add to that the concept of hair, makeup and costume, that is the complete character we are presenting. This is the character of Raji; she looks a certain way, she walks a certain way, and she is a killing machine, and that's all there is to it".

The Family Man 2 plot outline

The Family Man 2 tells us about Srikant Tiwari's inner conflict as he balances his personal and professional life. In course of time, he uncovers an assassination plot against the Prime Minister of India and Raji is at the centre of it.