HT Brunch Cover Story: Play it again, Sam

In the decade between 2000 and 2010, actress Sameera Reddy starred not only in films but also in the dreams of a vast number of men between the ages of three and a hundred, many of whom might even have swooned when they actually met her.

Social media was not a major part of most people’s lives at that time, but in every photograph of the actress ever published, Sameera was picture-perfect: fit, groomed, styled, and photoshopped to flawlessness.

So, it strikes you as the irony of all ironies that today, when social media is a huge part of everyone’s lives and filters are everything, Sameera Reddy’s photographs are the very opposite of what they used to be.

Her hair is grey and untamed. There’s not a speck of make-up on her face. Her figure flaunts more curves than you’d expect any actor to have. And her biggest fans these days are not men with stars in their eyes, but women of all ages who, given the opportunity to meet her, are not so much awed by her glamour as grateful to be in the presence of a woman so real.

How did an actress who was once so self-conscious about the way she looked that she needed a thousand beauty aids and an unforgiving regime of diet and exercise to maintain a façade of confidence turn into a woman who is one of the country’s biggest icons of body positivity today?

Sameera Reddy tells us all.

Sister act

When Sameera was a teen, she was a bundle of nerves and insecurities. With two popular, confident older sisters—former actor Meghna Reddy and model and VJ Sushma Reddy—she always struggled with self-confidence. And to make matters worse, she had a bad stammer.

“It put me in a bit of a hole,” she says, “where I didn’t feel like getting out and meeting people. Having two successful, gorgeous sisters made it a little bit harder for me.”

Her sisters, of course, were nothing but supportive but, like many young women, Sameera wasn’t comfortable in her own body.

“I just didn’t feel good. When you grow up plump, you start to equate yourself and your self-worth with the way you look and what your weight is—I did that for far too long. It’s been a constant up and down and constant mental struggle,” Sameera says.

This feeling of being constantly judged was why, when she entered the glamorous world of Bollywood, Sameera was one of the pickiest of celebrities. “I couldn’t sleep without a particular hair-tie and I needed a lip mask, and I had 1,000 creams, and I needed ear-plugs because sound would bother me,” she laughs.

It was after she got married and had her first child that Sameera’s life changed. Unfortunately, this involved “falling apart and then coming back together”.

“After my first child (Hans) was born, I became huge,” she explains. “I was 104 kgs and I broke completely, because I just couldn’t deal with it. People couldn’t recognise me, nothing made sense anymore, and I’d reached a point of almost self-loathing. I realised then that I really didn’t love myself at all. It’s really sad how hard I was on myself.”

It wasn’t just the extra kilos that weighed her down. Sameera suffered from post-partum depression and was also diagnosed with alopecia areata, an auto-immune disease that causes your hair to fall out. “I hit rock bottom,” she says.

That’s when she decided to take control of things, telling herself that she couldn’t keep repeating the same cycle over and over, and decided to change the narrative.

Ever Reddy

“My mental health was at stake,” says Sameera. “I had to redefine everything, and I just had to have the conviction that everybody around me could judge me as much as they wanted, but I owed it to myself to keep evolving—anyone can at any age.”

Luckily for Sameera, she had a great example right in front of her. “My mother-in-law [who features regularly in Sameera’s Reels] has done it! She’s 66 now, and today she’s this shining content creator with her own sense of style, and she’s super-cool! I’m so proud of her,” she says. “People should be allowed to evolve however they want to evolve. But unfortunately, this is a world where you’re judged at all levels, whether you’re an actor or a regular teen or a housewife.”

The first step on this journey towards changing the narrative was to show people the real, unfiltered her. When she posted her first raw, unfiltered picture to social media, Sameera was terrified.

“I had just gotten on to social media, and I was overwhelmed by how perfect everybody was looking,” she reveals. “Some people were on a flight, there were these perfect holiday pictures, and everyone was looking so uber sexy, there were these yoga mummies, while I was still changing diapers and looking exhausted as hell!”

The first picture she posted was one in which she had a lot of grey hair. “I had some very cool reactions and then some very harsh reactions,” she muses, “like ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘This is wrong’ ‘Buddhi bann gayi’. One girl commented, ‘This is not a representation of beauty, ma’am. Why are you showing us this?’ That’s when I realised it wasn’t their fault, because they’d been fed Sexy Sam until now, and that’s what they wanted to see!”

In fact, she started losing followers. “People didn’t want to see something real, and they would get upset about it,” she says, but shrugs it off. “I became absolutely okay with people dropping off the account and the right community coming on board. I want the wrong followers to leave!”

The importance of influence

Slowly but surely, Sameera has built a loyal following. She has 1.4 million followers on Instagram, and has essentially moulded what she calls her community. “I love that I give people a safe community, a place to have safe and healthy conversations,” she reflects. “The trolls came and went; eventually they just got fed up! And slowly, I started talking about how I feel about my body, my weight, my stretchmarks. And I refused to use a filter or touch up anything or take 400 pictures before finding one with the right angle.”

The response she got was incredible, with comments and messages pouring in about how people could relate to her dishevelled hair, natural out-of-bed look and generally feeling happy about herself. “The truth is, I don’t look glamorous when I’m feeding my kids or when I’m cleaning up! Today, it’s unbelievable how this community has grown into something really powerful,” she says. More importantly, she is looked up to by women of all ages, from Gen-Z to millennials, as the poster girl of everything that makes them insecure, as she champions being comfortable in one’s own skin. Not only do they find her relatable, they thank her for addressing the insecurities that have bogged them down… and start believing in themselves again.

Brands, too, have woken up and realised her potential. She now attracts endorsements as a body positive activist for beauty brands, a wellness advocate for household products and mothercare brands, and more recently, a clothing brand roped in both her and her husband to be its brand ambassadors. It has to be noted that she now has significantly more clout and is more desirable to labels than when she was acting full-time.

Given the somewhat negative connotations associated with the word ‘influencer’ today, does she shy away from calling herself one? “What’s wrong with being an influencer?” she counters. “Sometimes I’m just gobsmacked when I see what people are putting out there. I follow a bunch of them, and I’m just in awe of them. Unfortunately, I can’t follow trends like they do because most of the time I don’t even know what’s trending; I’m so busy with my kids!”

Fame first

Today, Sameera the relatable mom may be even more well-known than Sameera the actress, and she’s definitely setting a bigger example than her two older sisters, who are hardly to be seen on social media. She’s actively presenting this new face of beauty, but for her it’s different sides of the same coin. “Back then, it was more men who’d come up to me. Today, there’s women who’ll come up to me and give me big hugs and tell me they love me. I just melt, because it feels so good when a woman gives you a compliment!” she declares.

She feels the fame she has today is much more gratifying, simply because she can be herself and speak her mind without putting on a show or feeling the weight of expectations. “I’m not the person I was 10 years ago, and for that, I’m extremely grateful,” she says.

Does she miss acting, being on the big screen? “Well, acting is acting, and I’m always doing these little skits and things for social media. Of course, OTT is here to stay and I’d love to, but right now, my focus is just on my children, and I need to be here for them, just because I want to.”

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From HT Brunch, May 7, 2022

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