Sugar Tuesday

The dusky trailblazer dishes on her road to stardom, growing love affair with NYC and why she’ll never leave home without her glasses.

At a statuesque 5’9”, actress Sameera Reddy’s no-nonsense strut into a Bleecker Street studio creates a momentary hush amongst our crew. “I can’t see,” declares the 27-year-old bombshell, launching into an animated story involving a plastic splinter that flew into her contact lenses yesterday, only minutes before she boarded a flight from L.A. to New York. After the hellish ride, Sameera was rushed to a Manhattan E.R. where doctors scooped the fleck out. “They wanted to know everything about me, from my forefathers to my sex life,” she marvels. “Oh. And they told me to take it easy,” she adds, giggling, well aware of the fact that she isn’t exactly complying with their demands. This morning, in honor of our photoshoot, she’s agreed to six faster-than-lightning costume changes, a flurry of hair and make-up, and some serious flirting with the camera. But that’s Sameera for you—committed, undaunted, and a bit of a daredevil.

It’s been seven years since her first tryst with the camera, as a model for ghazal maestro Pankaj Udas’s video, Aahistaa. The offer came to her while she was working in the marketing branch of Omega Watches, during her last year of college in Mumbai. An aspiring economics major, Sameera even had a scholarship offer from a graduate school in Canada.

“I had everything sorted out,” she recalls. “But when the video opportunity came along, I thought, ‘why not?’” She’s quick to admit, though, that more than the video, it was the location, Australia that enticed her. “I didn’t even tell my friends I was going,” she says. “Only my family knew.” Upon returning to India, though, she was stunned to come home to a surge of marriage proposals—thanks to the demure, duppatta-clad girl she portrayed in Aahistaa—a cluster of enthusiastic fans, and even a few movie offers (rumor has it that she turned down India’s Oscar nominee, Lagaan). The music video was a regular feature on all of India’s hot music channels—needless to say, Sameera had made quite the first impression. Though she resisted Bollywood’s call for another two years, she succumbed to the glitter with her first film, Maine Dil Tujhko Diya in 2002, and has remained immersed in it since. “I love the drama,” she confesses. “Everything is so over-the-top.”

She laughs warmly when we ask her about her relationship with the Indian tabloid scene, a growing concern for Hindi movie stars these days. “It really doesn’t take much for them to talk,” she says. “There’ll be front page stories that say things like, ‘Sameera’s horse runs off into traffic—with her on it!’, and I’m like, ‘where are you getting your facts?’”.

For the past two weeks though, Sameera’s taken a hiatus from the frenzy of Bollywood in an effort to scout out a potential agent in the U.S. Besides her usual film commitments, the last year has been all about globe-trotting—with a purpose. This past spring, Sameera starred in, “Spice Trade,” a BBC documentary where she temporarily switched lives with ex-Spice Girl, Emma Bunton. While Emma learnt to shake it on a Bollywood set, Sameera was a guest star on Casualty, a popular Grey’s Anatomy-esque English TV show. “It was funny ‘cause Emma and I were doing these comparisons between Bombay and London,” she says. “In India, when they say wrap-up at 7, they might just mean 7 in the morning,” she chuckles. “Every night, they took me to these hoity-toity British benefit dinners, and after a few I was like, ‘god, I miss Bombay’.” Though it was an eye-opening experience overall, Sameera claims the constant entourage of cameras gave her a taste of what it’s like behind the scenes of a reality show. “I don’t know how people do it,” she says. “Especially in America—its like audiences thrive on other people’s bulls@#$,” she states, matter-of-factly.

Then again, there are things about America she can’t get enough of, including New York City. “It’s my escape,” she claims. “I can come here and take the train to Brooklyn, and it’ll be fine.” She tells me about a ride last week, where she watched a young Gujarati couple haggle over whether it was, in fact, Sameera Reddy standing across from them. “My hair was up, I had this big coat on…I guess it was too much for them to think about what I would be doing on a New York City subway,” she explains. When I ask her whether she eventually settled it for the couple, she flashes me a row of pearly whites with an innocent shake of her head.

In a matter of moments, however, she trades the mischievous grin for a smoldering gaze as she seduces the camera. Tousling her enviably long—and totally natural, we should add—tresses, Sameera can barely see anything beyond the tip of her nose, let alone her makeup artist, who’s standing only steps away. But you would never know. With the hint of a smile lingering under her perfectly pink pout, her chin raised and eyes sparkling, she looks almost majestic. Which is why I’m struggling to picture her as a gritty action-hero—one of the more recent roles she’s undertaken, thanks to Paradox Studios, a Mumbai-based gaming studio that approached her in February.

“I was on a flight with my PSP, playing Need for Speed, and I was so engrossed,” she remembers. “This rep from Paradox walked over to me and told me he was in a state of shock to see an actress playing a racing game.” As the conversation continued, the two agreed to develop a made-for-mobile video game, Sam’s Mission, where the main character (based on Sameera) is an ancient warrior princess, battling it out to save her kingdom. “The title was corny as hell when I first thought about it, but it’s doing well,” she says. “They’re even coming out with a second part.”

In real life, though Sameera may be far from an actual warrior princess, she’s all about fighting for the causes she believes in—or talking about them, at least. Most recently, she started touring colleges all over Mumbai in an attempt to alert young girls to eating disorders, a problem that’s only begun to rear its threatening head in metropolises across the nation. “It took me a lot of time to realize that being voluptuous and having a full body was okay,” she says. Growing up with a couple of cover girl sisters—her older sister, model Meghna Reddy, is well-known for her 22-inch waist—didn’t make things any easier. “I always wished there was someone I could’ve talked to about my concerns when I was in school.”

Concerns aside, there’s no doubt that Sameera’s come a long way from the slightly introverted college student to the sassy, gregarious actress she is today. As she takes an energetic swig from her bottle of green tea—it’s become somewhat of an addiction since she arrived in the US, she admits—one can only hope it’s almost wrap-up time. Alas, as if on cue, the photographer hollers that we’re merely halfway through the shoot. While the rest of us hold back our tired sighs, Sameera springs up from her stool, sending it swiveling, and rushes into the fitting room. “Wow, we’re already half way?” she muses. Her optimism is infectious, and before we know it, there’s a pleasant chatter surrounding the set. Strangely enough, for someone with blurry vision, she’s sure able to see the brighter side.

Sameera Reddy was photographed for iSTYLE Magazine in New York by photographers Chago and Brian.