Tamannaah Bhatia has reflected on how her attitude towards intimacy on screen has changed over the course of her acting career, recalling a time when even watching such scenes with family made her uncomfortable.
The actor’s comments came during the period when she was appearing in streaming projects such as Jee Karda and Lust Stories 2, both of which explored mature relationships and challenged some of the boundaries she had maintained earlier in her career.
Tamannaah says she once felt uncomfortable watching intimate scenes
Looking back at her earlier relationship with on-screen intimacy, Tamannaah said she could identify with viewers who felt awkward watching such scenes.
“I was that audience that would get awkward sitting with my family, sitting and watching something like that,” she said.
She recalled becoming visibly uncomfortable and said that, for a significant part of her career, she deliberately avoided intimate material in the projects she chose.
Her comments offer an insight into why her later roles represented such a noticeable change for audiences who had followed her career for years.
“That illusion has broken for me”
Tamannaah described her changing perspective as a personal and professional journey.
“So for me, it was a journey from being an actor who caters to a massier audience to now doing stuff that, growing up for me, was a stigma,” she explained.
The actor added that her perspective had changed with time and experience.
“I just don’t want that to happen to the audience now cause they don’t need that anymore. That illusion has broken for me, so I am enjoying exploring myself as an artist and doing varied characters and work.”
Her remarks suggest that the decision to take on more mature material was not simply a departure from her earlier image but part of a broader process of artistic experimentation.
Jee Karda marked a different phase in Tamannaah’s career
Tamannaah’s comments came after the release of ** Jee Karda ** on Prime Video, where she played Lavanya.
The series explored friendship, relationships, marriage and the complications of adult life. Its mature themes represented a different kind of material for Tamannaah, particularly when viewed against the boundaries she had previously discussed publicly.
The actor later explained that intimate scenes in the series were intended to contribute to the characters’ stories rather than exist merely for sensational value.
Lust Stories 2 pushed the conversation further
Tamannaah continued exploring mature relationship drama in ** Lust Stories 2 **.
She appeared in filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh’s segment of the Netflix anthology, sharing the screen with Vijay Varma.
The project received considerable attention because Tamannaah and Vijay Varma were also romantically linked off screen, adding another layer of public interest to their appearance together.
The anthology was released on Netflix on June 29, 2023, and featured four separate stories exploring relationships, desire, marriage and intimacy.
A deliberate move beyond a familiar screen image
For an actor whose career began at a young age, changing the type of roles she accepts can naturally attract attention.
Tamannaah spent years working extensively in mainstream Hindi, Tamil and Telugu cinema, building a large audience through commercial films. Her decision to take on more mature streaming projects therefore represented a significant shift in the material associated with her.
Rather than viewing that change negatively, she has described it as an opportunity to discover different sides of herself as a performer.
Her approach reflects the flexibility that streaming platforms have brought to Indian storytelling, particularly for actors who want to move between conventional commercial cinema and more character-driven material.
Tamannaah wants to keep experimenting
The actor’s comments ultimately point toward a larger theme in her career: reinvention.
From her early work in South Indian cinema and Baahubali to her later streaming projects and performance-led roles, Tamannaah has repeatedly expanded her professional range.
Her experience with Jee Karda and Lust Stories 2 allowed her to explore material that she once viewed differently as both an actor and an audience member.
For Tamannaah, the change appears to be about creative freedom rather than simply changing her image.
As she put it, the “illusion” she once had around intimacy on screen has broken, allowing her to approach varied characters with a more open perspective.
