With Kangana Ranaut at the helm, it is natural for the actress to get all the limelight, but Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi will also have other pivotal characters. One of them is Maharaja Gangadhar Rao, the husband of Manikarnika. Bengali actor Jisshu Sengupta plays Gangadhar Rao.
Neetu Lulla, who has designed the actor’s costumes, described Sengupta’s look as “understated yet powerful”.
“Jisshu’s entire look and character in the film is understated yet powerful and strong as the husband and the king of Jhansi. Special care was taken for the idea was to portray and showcase his character as a man who is immensely supportive of his wife Rani Laxmibai in all her ventures and endeavours and wanted her to rule the kingdom of Jhansi with him,” said Lulla, in a statement to Cinestaan.com.
“He [Gangadhar Rao] is her strongest pillar of strength, support and security in the film. So to bring that quality and aspect of his personality out, we have given him a bit of a look which is very apt with the kind of look that we have done because we have kept the colors also understated and not very loud but we’ve kept them with strong shoulders and cuts so that he looked the strength that he exuded for the queen in the film,” Lulla added.
Manikarnika was just just 14 when she married Gangadhar Rao. Post her marriage, Manikarnika was renamed Lakshmibai. Now, it is impossible for director Krish to get Ranaut to look like a 14-year-old. Perhaps, they must have roped in a child artiste for the marriage sequence. Gangadhar Rao and Manikarnika were married only briefly as the king passed away in 1953.
Sengupta, 41, looks impressive as Gandhadhar Rao. Sengupta has played a king before in the recently released Bengali film Ek Je Chhilo Raja (2018), where he played Maharaja Mahendra Kumar Chowdhury of Bikrampur Estate.
Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi is set to be released on 25 January.