Yash has been three different actors in one career. The first was a romantic hero who made Kannada audiences fall in love with him through films like Googly, Drama and Mr. and Mrs. Ramachari. The second was Rocky Bhai, who made the rest of India fall in line. The third, if the Toxic trailers are any indication, is something neither of the first two would recognise.

Before cinema, there was television that was by all means conquered by the actor. His break on the small screen came with Nanda Gokula, a Kannada television serial that became a hit and gave him his first taste of public recognition. It also gave him something else: Radhika Pandit, who was his co-star on the show and would later become his wife. He followed Nanda Gokula with other television work before making the leap to cinema.

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The romantic phase: 2007 to 2016

Yash’s film career began in 2007 with a supporting role in Priya Hassan’s Jambada Hudugi. His breakthrough came with Moggina Manasu, a romantic drama directed by Shashank, where he played the romantic interest opposite Radhika Pandit. His first title role came with Rocky, a college romance that flopped at the box office. Two more forgettable films followed, Kallara Santhe and Gokula, before he found his footing.

Modalasala, a romantic drama, became his first solo commercial hit and signalled that the audience was willing to give him another chance after the early stumbles. Rajadhani had political undertones but was still built around a love story. Kirataka was an action-romance that gave him his first taste of mass-audience appeal. Then came Drama, directed by Yogaraj Bhat, which paired Yash with Radhika again and became a major hit. The film was a full-blown romantic comedy with humour, music and the kind of easy charm that Yash brought naturally to the screen.

Googly, directed by Pawan Wadeyar, was the film that best represented this phase of Yash’s career. A lighthearted romantic comedy, it featured Yash as a carefree, fun-loving young man trying to win over a girl played by Kriti Kharbanda. The film was a box office success and the Googly character became one of the most loved roles of Yash’s pre-KGF career.

Yash and Kriti Kharbanda in a still from the movie Googly

The next few years, he made films like Gajakesari, which pushed him slightly into the action and fantasy space but retained a strong romantic thread. Then came Mr. and Mrs. Ramachari, directed by Santhosh Ananddram, which paired Yash with Radhika Pandit for the third time. The film was a blockbuster, one of the highest-grossing Kannada films of that year, and its love story felt like a screen version of the couple’s real-life relationship. They were dating by this point, though they would not marry until December 2016.

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Through this entire stretch, from 2008 to 2016, Yash was Kannada cinema’s most bankable romantic hero. He was the guy audiences went to see when they wanted warmth, charm and a love story that made them feel good. He was not intimidating. He was not intense. He was, by every definition, the boy next door.

The transition: Masterpiece to KGF

The first real signal of a shift came with Masterpiece, directed by Manju Mandavya. The film was a commercial entertainer with more action than Yash’s earlier work, and it performed well at the box office. Santhu Straight Forward followed in a similar mould, an action-romance that kept one foot in both camps. But these films were still operating within the Kannada market, and the action was stylised rather than raw.

The real pivot was Prashanth Neel. The director, who had previously made Ugramm, a low-budget action film that became a cult hit, approached Yash with the script for KGF. The story of Rocky, a man who rises from the streets of Mumbai to become the king of the Kolar Gold Fields, was unlike anything Yash had done before. It was dark, violent, stylised and built on a mythology of power, dominance and masculinity that had nothing to do with the breezy romantic heroes Yash had been playing for a decade.

KGF: Chapter 1 released on December 21, 2018, the same day as Shah Rukh Khan’s Zero. It became the first Kannada film to cross Rs 237 crore worldwide. KGF: Chapter 2, released on April 14, 2022, crossed Rs 1,215 crore, becoming one of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time. The boy next door was gone and in that place stood Rocky Bhai, a character so overwhelming in its intensity that it swallowed the actor’s previous identity whole.

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The cost of reinvention

The irony of Yash’s transformation is that the very qualities that made him great in romantic comedies are the ones that most of his current audience does not know exist. The lightness, the humour, the warmth, the ability to make a girl blush with a look rather than intimidate a room with a stare, all of that is still in there. You can see it in fleeting moments at press events, in the way he jokes with his co-stars, in the way he talks about his wife Radhika and their children Ayra and Yatharv with a softness that Rocky Bhai would never allow.

But the market has decided what Yash is. And what Yash is, post-KGF, is an alpha male. The brooding, intense, physically commanding presence that fills IMAX screens and sells tickets across continents. Going back to a Googly or a Mr. and Mrs. Ramachari now would feel like a regression, even though those films showcase a range that KGF never asked for.

Toxic: The third Yash

With Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups releasing on Wednesday, Yash is attempting something neither of his previous two versions would have done. The film, directed by Geetu Mohandas, pushes him into a territory that is neither the boy-next-door romance of his early career nor the straightforward alpha heroism of KGF. It is darker, more psychologically complex and, by Yash’s own description, designed to “push you to the darkest corners and make you ask uncomfortable questions about human relationships.”

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At the Hyderabad pre-release event, he defended the choice of working with a female director over a commercial formula filmmaker. “I already have enough money. I am not respected for my money. I am respected for my work,” he said. The actor added that the film contains “a voice for women, unlike how it is coming across in the trailer,” suggesting that the finished film may be very different from the provocative marketing that has defined its promotional campaign.

Whether Toxic represents a genuine new chapter in Yash’s evolution or simply a darker shade of the same alpha persona remains to be seen. But for anyone who only knows him as Rocky Bhai, his pre-KGF filmography is worth revisiting. There was a time, not so long ago, when the most intimidating man in Indian cinema was making audiences laugh in a village love story called Googly. And he was very, very good at it.