Life is about to change for Dubai schoolgirl Kashvi Majmundar in a major way. After bagging her first acting role in the big budget Prime Video series Citadel: Honey Bunny, the recently turned nine-year-old is receiving rave reviews for her performance, playing a young version of Priyanka Chopra Jonas's character in the spy thriller.
“People in school have now started to recognise me,” the sprightly Year 5 student from Dubai tells The National. “And so many people are telling me they saw the show.”
The action thriller is a prequel to Citadel, the US series which premiered last year, and serves as an origin story for Chopra Jonas's character Nadia Sinh. Set in Mumbai in the 1990s, Citadel: Honey Bunny features Bollywood star Varun Dhawan and South Indian actress Samantha Ruth Prabhu in the lead as deadly spies. Kashvi plays their daughter, Nadia. Acclaimed filmmakers Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, famously known as Raj & DK, direct all six episodes in the series.
Despite mixed reviews, the show claimed the top spot as Prime Video's most-watched series worldwide during its launch weekend and also landed in the Top 10 in 150 countries, including the UAE, UK, US, Canada, Brazil and Australia.
Kashvi, who lives in Dubai with her parents and younger brother, shot for about 22 days last year, flitting between the UAE and India as and when she was required. She says she had no nerves going on set for the first time and sharing the screen with major stars.
“I was just hyper,” she says. “I was excited to shoot and be on the show, to say my dialogues in front of the camera. It was a really fun experience.
“When I met Samantha didi [elder sister] for the first time, it was during a lunch. She was so nice and I told her I love her song, Oo Antava Mawa. Then when I met Varun bhaiya [older brother], I told him how much I love his dancing.
“Our first scene was when he says the line 'I am your father,' to me. And I remember that on our first take, when he said that, I started blushing because I was such a big fan of his. Then everyone on the set started laughing. That was a fun day.”
Playing a younger version of Chopra Jonas is special because she's “a perfect match”, she says. “She acts and now I can say I am part of the acting community too. She dances very well, and so do I. She sings and I love singing too. And she speaks so well, just like me.”
Kashvi has also won multiple Principal's Awards for her overall achievements and brought home many awards for her dancing. “I started dancing when I was only 10 to 12 months, I think. My mum would put on music and I'd just move my body. So I've loved dancing since I remember. It's my first passion,” she says. “And I think people enjoy to watch me dance because of the expressions I make.”
Her dancing skills are popular on Instagram, where she has more than 176,000 followers. It was through social media that Kashvi was hand-picked by Bollywood actress Nora Fatehi to join her on stage during her International Indian Film Academy Awards performance in Abu Dhabi in 2022, her first taste of stardom.
But now that she's bitten the acting bug, Kashvi says she wants to be global actress when she grows up. And she wants to do roles that will challenge her. “I want do roles that are different from my personality. Maybe a spy or an action star,” she says. “I don't want to be just a Bollywood actress, I want to be an international star … like Priyanka Chopra.”
