Recently the first look of the awaited biopic, Shakeela was released and it was instantly met with large amount of appreciation for the striking first look. The lead actress of the film, Richa Chadha looked every bit stunning in the first look in which she donned only South Indian style gold on her body standing against a wall inscribed with various comments and abuses Shakeela was given despite her successes.

Now an interesting part of the image which the makers have just revealed is that the image actually was inspired by a classic image of not Shakeela but that if Silk Smitha. And there’s a special reason behind it. The post of Shakeela is inspired by a film of Smitha, titled Miss Pamela in which the poster has Silk posing in only gold jewellery. The reason for the inspiration was that they wanted to pay an homage to the Late Silk Smitha who has an untimely tragic demise, which lead to the rise of Shakeela’s popularity and had it not been for Silk to pave the way with her unapologetic choices, Shakeela wouldn’t have been so popular. Shakeela post Silk’s demise rose to extreme levels of stardom becoming highly successful with massive fan following. She was the only actress of her time whose films were not just dubbed in South Indian languages but were dubbed in 16 languages globally including Nepali, Chinese, Sinhalese, Russian amongst others

Speaking about the tribute, Richa said, “Silk Smitha was an iconic name in the 90s whose popularity knew no bounds. She created a genre in cinema which didn’t exist and empowered many women with her unapologetic choices. Her films made in a lot of money at the box office. Unfortunately she had a tragic untimely death and her demise lead to the rise of Shakeela’s popularity. Thus when we as a team brainstormed on the references for the Shoot, we came across the iconic poster of Silk’s film and we wanted to do a homage to her. Because hadn’t it been for Silk, Shakeela wouldn’t have had such phenomenal popularity”.