Nayanthara's Journey, Resilience, and the Price of Stardom

The documentary, Nayanthara: Beyond the Fairy Tale, while celebrating Nayanthara’s success, overemphasizes Vignesh Shivan’s role, potentially overshadowing Nayanthara’s own accomplishments.

The recent controversy sparked by Dhanush and Nayanthara over the Netflix documentary Nayanthara: Beyond the Fairy Tale, released on November 18, 2024, coinciding with her 40th birthday, has captured the attention of netizens for various reasons. The documentary offers a glimpse into the life and career of Nayanthara, a leading Indian film star affectionately called the “Lady Superstar” of Tamil cinema. It prominently features her love story and wedding with the Tamil film director Vignesh Shivan.

Selling a wedding

Nayanthara sold the rights to Netflix to showcase her wedding and the lead-up to it, imbuing the episodes with a melodramatic flair. The documentary has elicited polarized responses, with some praising it while others harshly criticising both the production and the actor’s decision to ‘sell her wedding’ for substantial financial gain. Critics have labelled the documentary as a tool for self-promotion, calling it “cringe” and accusing the actor of mediocrity and greed.

The documentary, directed by Amith Krishnan, opens with a clearly staged sequence designed to appear as a natural, unscripted moment, featuring the last-minute change of Nayanthara and Vignesh Shivan’s wedding venue. This melodramatic tone pervades the entire documentary, often making viewers feel as though they are watching a contrived and overly sentimental production rather than an authentic documentary. Instead of offering deeper insights into Nayanthara’s personality or career, the documentary has been criticized for leaning on superficial visuals and promotional undertones, leaving audiences who anticipated raw and meaningful storytelling disappointed. Intended as an inspirational piece, it has been widely regarded as a missed opportunity that prioritizes ‘image’ over substance, failing to connect on a more profound emotional level. While many of these critiques hold validity, the documentary also accomplishes certain objectives worth noting.

Amidst the uproar over a woman monetising the rights to showcase her wedding, it should instead be viewed as a savvy financial decision in a country where dowry practices persist. I read this documentary to analyse some of such overlooked nuances.

Balancing acts of a career woman

The documentary presents the life of a female celebrity not by mirroring fairy-tale-like charm or whimsical fantasies but by highlighting the struggles she encountered on her path to stardom. While critics argue that the documentary does not fully explore these challenges, it reflects Nayanthara’s intention to showcase the brighter side of life, instead of listing out the difficulties (though she articulates them subtly). Within its limited runtime of just over an hour, the documentary selectively touches on key moments of her life, including her experience of acute body shaming, which is believed to have constrained some career opportunities. Nayanthara candidly discusses the battles she fought—both against external detractors and within herself.

The narrative also emphasises her ability to balance personal and professional responsibilities, illustrated through her mother’s recollections of Nayanthara’s consistent efforts to stay connected with her family. These remarks are not mere praises of a dutiful daughter but rather responses to societal expectations of career-oriented women. In other words, her mother’s affirmations about her dutiful nature seem to underscore societal ideals of virtue expected from daughters. The documentary subtly highlights the personal responsibilities and the self-created support systems essential for a woman who is career driven to enjoy professional success.

Her roads to stardom

This documentary invites viewers to reconsider the societal glass ceilings imposed on women. It explores how opportunistic society can be, often rushing to judge and deny women opportunities. As some prominent actors note in their testimonies, Nayanthara’s journey was fraught with several challenges unique to female actors. This emphasis on gender identity is particularly significant. The discourse surrounding the #MeToo movement, the actress abduction case in Kerala, the formation of the Women in Cinema Collective, and recent revelations about the casting couch in the film industry underscores the difficulties women face in carving out and sustaining a space in the industry. Nayanthara’s struggles exemplify this reality. Following her involvement in tumultuous love relationships, she had to step away from the industry for nearly two years—a gap that made her eventual return all the more challenging. In the film industry, a glaringly different status quo exists for actors based on gender. Despite enduring gossip, rumours, and setbacks in both her personal and professional life, Nayanthara managed to reclaim her star value. As she poignantly states:

“Just get up and make sure that the people who kind of treated you bad look at you every single day and feel so terrible about themselves that they have been so bad to you. Every person has to do that.”

The documentary encourages viewers to reflect on the professionalism required to steer through personal and professional adversities. It highlights how vulnerability—whether as a woman, a leading actress, or a partner—can be normalized rather than weighed down by societal stigma. Nayanthara emphasizes the importance of learning from mistakes and moving forward without regret. In this regard, the documentary’s themes extend beyond mere financial gains or popularity boosts. It inspires through its portrayal of a steadfast refusal to succumb to a system intent on breaking individuals and the resilience to rise above adversity and counter hate campaigns.

The gendered narrative

The gender divide prevalent in the cinematic world and society at large is starkly underscored when Nayanthara points out that no media persons ever questioned the men involved in her romantic relationships. She was the one who bore the brunt of media scrutiny and criticism, constantly being asked about rumours and her involvement with co-stars. This unequal treatment, rooted in gender bias, is a recurring theme in her narrative. Despite her stardom, she was not spared from controversies that targeted her not just for her professional choices but for being a woman.

Male actors, directors, and producers who share their insights in the documentary praise Nayanthara not only for her talent on screen but also for her unwavering courage in overcoming challenges that could have derailed her career. Hearing such testimony from veteran actors carrying a sense of profound respect for her is particularly poignant. This tone of respect, though immensely rewarding, remains one of the most difficult achievements for women in any profession, especially in a society that often dismisses their success as the result of several compromises rather than relentless hard work.

However, the documentary prominently highlights the persona of Vignesh Shivan, shaping it as a central agenda of the film. In several segments, it appears to be a deliberate effort to broadcast the notion of Nayanthara’s “great choice” and to emphasize Vignesh Shivan’s qualities as a partner. Scenes featuring Nayanthara speaking about Vignesh or other film personalities praising him carry a subtle but evident undertone of validating his worth. This includes countering the narratives in hate memes and trolls that label him as a “struggling director-producer-lyricist” unworthy of Nayanthara, by portraying him as an extraordinary human being, often even overshadowing Nayanthara herself.

This calculated attempt to garner social approval for their relationship becomes a covert agenda of the documentary. In this sense, Beyond the Fairy Tale is not solely about its princess and her struggles; it is, in many ways, more about her prince charming!