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Written by: Entertainment Desk
3 min readHyderabadFeb 8, 2026 07:58 PM IST
Radhika Sarathkumar talks about her friendship with Rajinikanth.
Radhika Sarathkumar recently shared fascinating anecdotes about her long-standing association with Rajinikanth, offering rare glimpses into a lesser-known side of the superstar.
Recalling her first interaction with Rajinikanth, Radhika told Galatta Plus, “I remember I was with some friends and we had gone to New Woodlands – the drive-in was the ‘in’ place to hang around. Rajinikanth sir used to come there. He was a student having coffee or tea or something. They told me, ‘Oh, you know, he’s popular. He’s done this.’ So I walked up to Rajinikanth and said, ‘Can you do that cigarette trick for me?’ And he did it for me.”
The twist? “He didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know who he was. But fate made sure that we know each other,” she added.
Radhika Sarathkumar further painted a vivid picture of their wild younger days during the shooting of films like Pokkiri Raja. “We used to have late night shoots. In the night, we used to race cars from AVM to our houses. Mad!” she exclaimed.
But it was a bike ride through Chennai that remains etched in her memory. Radhika said, “He was on a bike and I was to be with him. We were doing some cover shoot for some magazine. He took me all around Chennai on a bike and he was showing me places – ‘I used to sleep on this pavement, I used to do this.’ And I was so fascinated because I’ve never seen… I know about a lot of people’s struggles, but with him I was like wow.”
The ride had an unexpected interruption. “We were turning from Mount Road onto the Beach Road at the junction when a car sped in, slammed its brakes right next to us, shot us a glare, and then turned away and left. So I was thinking, ‘Who is this?’ He (Rajinikanth) was laughing. He said, ‘No, no, he’s my wife’s brother. He must be thinking…’ But actually we left from his house, so Latha was there when we left. So when we came back, she was laughing. She said, ‘Oh, my brother called and said…'”
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What makes Radhika Sarathkumar’s perspective unique is that she witnessed Rajinikanth’s transformation from an upcoming actor to a cultural phenomenon. Despite the friendly banter and nicknames like Raji, Radhika is deeply respectful of Rajinikanth’s stature today. “Of course, you have to have respect for whom he has become today and what he stands for,” she acknowledged.
Radhika and Rajinikanth’s friendship represents a bygone era of Tamil cinema – when stars sat under trees instead of in caravans, when they could race through city streets without security concerns, and when genuine friendships were formed on set.
“We had the best films, we had great scripts, we had great songs, we had great co-stars, and there was no caravan, so we all were sitting under the tree, chatting, being friends for life,” Radhika reflected nostalgically.
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