Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya may sound weird for a film title, but it sure did grab attention. To be released this week, the film has newcomer Naveen Polishetty playing a detective. As for the long title, he informs that a promotional video was made to gauge people’s reaction. “Anyone who would come to see the shoot would be asked the name of the film and they came up with all sorts of titles — ‘Agent Satya Srinivas’, ‘Satya Sai’, ‘Ganesh Acharya’, ‘Srinivasapuram’ etc — in the process I almost forgot the name of my film.”
Naveen’s journey in acting started with theatre; that’s when he met director Sukumar and was offered a role in Nenokkadine . But his claim to fame was his most popular Youtube videos like AIB (All India Bakchod) series Honest Engineering Campus Placements, Honest Indian Weddings, Honest Bars and restaurants, Chinese Bhasad and Man’s Best Friend to name a few. After the Youtube videos became viral, he got lot of television serial offers but he didn’t think it was the right timefor him to take up the offers. He shares, “I started learning to write while acting in these (AIB) videos. While all this was happening I had an eye open for a debut in Telugu cinema. One day, Swaroop, director of Agent Sai Sreenivasa Athreya texted me with the offer and I found the script and character exciting, the title grabbed my attention.Then I moved from Mumbai to Hyderabad and joined the director as a co-writer; together we kept working on the script. I loved the way he wrote the character and conceived the scenes,” gushes Naveen.
Engineer-turned-actor/director, Naveen enjoys what’s considered to be a ‘pan Indian face’.Speaking fluent Hindi helped his career further. A Bollywood debut is happening later this year. He shares, “I am playing one of the leads in Chhichhore , along with Sushant Singh Rajput and Shraddha Kapoor, it’s being directed by Nitesh Tiwari (of Dangal fame). The last couple of years have been good, a lot of things started moving. It has taken years of auditioning and honing my skill to reach where I am.”
