Tanikella Bharani & Roja Selvamani Movies Together List — 5 Films

The shape of the work

The 1990s account for 80% of everything they made together. The 1990s belonged to Annamayya; the 2010s to Shambo Shiva Shambo. Tanikella Bharani acted in every film; Roja Selvamani acted in all of them. Mostly Telugu, with 1 film in telugu.

Partnership facts

• Tanikella Bharani wrote the dialogues for 'Bobbili Simham' (1994) and specifically requested Roja Selvamani for the female lead after being impressed by her work in Tamil cinema. He convinced the director she could pull off the Telugu role despite not knowing the language fluently yet.
• In 'Big Boss' (1995), Bharani played a comedic sidekick while Roja played the romantic lead. Their scenes together had no romantic tension — instead, Bharani deliberately underplayed his reactions to make Roja's dramatic moments pop. He later said he treated her like a younger sister on set.
• During the shoot of 'Annamayya' (1997), Roja was struggling with Telugu diction for her devotional song sequences. Tanikella Bharani, who wrote the film's dialogues, spent evenings after pack-up drilling her on pronunciation line by line. She later called him her 'Telugu guru' in an interview.
• Roja Selvamani once said: 'Bharani garu never made me feel like an outsider. On the sets of Annamayya, he would translate every director instruction into Tamil for me before action. That's why I never felt nervous working with him.'
• Their collaboration on 'Annamayya' (1997) directly led to Roja being cast in the Tamil devotional blockbuster 'Thirupathi Ezhumalai Venkatesa' (1999). The Tamil director saw her performance in the Telugu film and specifically wanted the same 'devotional grace' she showed under Bharani's dialogue coaching.