While Indian actors are making their presence felt by acting in international films, there are some who are working behind the scenes too like Harshita Reddy of Bengaluru who has made a mark for herself in Hollywood. She is the lead set designer for “The Women in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”, a superhit Netflix film starring Kristen Bell.

Residing in Los Angeles, Reddy is an architect by training who is an art director and set designer. Interestingly she gave up her promising career as an architect and made it in an industry where women are very few.

The reason being, Reddy when she was young fell in love with celluloid when she saw “Arjun” a Telugu film in which the iconic Madurai temple had been recreated. Talking to voyagela.com, she said: “The astonishing amount of work and detail that went into creating this set was absolutely mind boggling. I was fascinated that they were recreating such a monumental structure just for a movie. It was at that moment when the 13-year-old artist in me decided what my career was.”

Sharing her work experience in Hollywood with thehansindia.com when she was asked to design the house of the lead character with Melanie Jones, the noted production designer, she said: "I was expected to make construction drawings for an entire 3- storey house in just under 3 weeks. Although I was slightly intimidated by the task at hand, I decided to take up the challenge. Even though the pandemic presented multiple challenges such as not having the flexibility to shoot at actual locations and limiting the number of people on set, it was rewarding to see the outcome."

Describing it as a great learning experience she added: "We had about three weeks of prep time and an additional three weeks of construction to make this happen along with the second lead's house and other small sets."

Reddy has earmarked her goals for the future, she told the media that she intends to work hard and become an art director and finally a production designer. "My goal is to develop the skill sets that will allow me to work on a diverse range of projects irrespective of the language or the country itself.”

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