Summer at the BO

Rana Daggubati is living it up doing a balancing act between a rom-com and an underworld thriller.

March 21, 2012 05:31 pm | Updated 05:31 pm IST

Rana Daggubati. Photo: Nagara Gopal

Rana Daggubati. Photo: Nagara Gopal

Rana Daggubati is at ease amidst a whirlwind of promotional activity. Naa Ishtam is his fourth film and his first love story, a romantic comedy at that. “Finally I am playing my age and not a politician ( Leader ) or a guy who wants to commit suicide ( Nenu Naa Rakshashi ),” he laughs. Telugu cinema has seen very few rom-coms and the last one that did justice to the genre was the hugely successful Ala Modalaindi . “ Ala Modalaindi was strictly a rom-com in genre, while my film is more than that. I felt relaxed to play a character that let me discover the fun side of me,” says Rana.

The title was inspired by Ram Gopal Varma's book of the same name. Both Rana and director Prakash Toleti felt the title befits the character of a self-centred hero.

“I play a guy who is extremely selfish. His selfishness is born out of fear that he will be taken advantage of if he lets go. To quote a line from the film, ‘If you live the way others want you to live, they call you a nice guy. Live your life the way you want to and you will be called selfish. I am the second kind',” explains Rana.

This is the first time Rana has worked with a debut director (Prakash Toleti), after having worked with established names like Sekhar Kammula, Puri Jagannadh and Rohan Sippy. “Prakash had amazing clarity though he was directing for the first time. He was a mathematics teacher before he entered cinema. So he looked at each character like a student,” says the actor.

Rana draws a parallel between iconic films and the characters he is getting to portray now. Drawing an analogy, he says, “I was in school when I saw Godfather and Nayakan . While shooting for Leader , I felt I was entering into that space. Dum Maaro Dum reminded me of Amores Perros and Steven Soderbergh's Traffic . Naa Ishtam , I feel, is like Rangeela where each character is right in his/her own way with different points of view.”

A few weeks from now, the actor will be seen as a rough and tough Maharashtrian cop in RGV's Department . Shifting between shooting schedules of Naa Ishtam and Department wasn't easy, says Rana. “In Department , my body language is different. I sport a bar handle moustache and talk in a measured way. It would take me a while to get in sync with each character after shooting for Naa Ishtam .”

Department,Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum (by Krish Jagarlamudi) and Selvaraghavan's Tamil film require Rana to be at his fittest best to perform action sequences.

And he is mighty pleased with the attention he is getting for his newly-acquired six-pack abs. “I was training twice a day in between my shooting schedules. Lakshman Reddy, the silver medallist of this year's Mr. India contest, has been guiding me. He is a professional bodybuilder.

He has a few more months before his next competition. So I told him that this is my time to compete (on screen) and he obliged,” laughs Rana.

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