...says an ecstatic Rana Daggubati who has a spate of film releases to look forward to this year — both as an actor and as a producer
Rana Daggubati seems to have an eventful year ahead of him. There is the release of his long-in-the-making South Indian epic film Bahubali, apart from two Hindi films—Baby and Nia — along with some interesting ventures as a producer. The actor says he is very excited about how Bahubali has panned out. “My ideal plan in life was to do one film that releases in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Bahubali is the answer to my prayers I feel and I couldn’t be happier,” he says.
At the moment though, Rana is busy with his upcoming release Baby. About the project he says, “I got a call from Neeraj’s (Pandey) office saying there’s a film like this and we would like to meet you for it. It was the first time I met Neeraj and found him to be a chilled out, calm man. He gave me a briefing for 20 minutes and then said, ‘if you like it so far, I’ll tell you the whole story’. For the last two-and-a-half-years, I had been doing just one film, Bahubali and there was a bunch of Hindi films offered to me, but I was waiting for something like Baby.”
With a superstar like Akshay in the lead, wasn’t Rana afraid of getting a raw deal “Akshay is a senior star and there’s so much to learn from senior actors every time. I’ve had a solid time with Akshay sir doing deadly stunts in Abu Dhabi. I really don’t worry about screen space because I’m sure my part will leave an impact on the audience.”
Another project Rana is gung- ho about is Nia opposite Bipasha Basu. “It’s always nice working with Bipasha. My Hindi debut was with her. She is one of the few friends I have in Mumbai.”
Rana’s life always revolved around films, but acting was never plan A, he tells us. “I always thought about doing films, but not as an actor. For the last 10 years I’ve been doing visual effects for films. Now I’m an actor, but I hope to do a lot of other things in films as well. I grew up seeing a lot of filmmakers at home and watching a lot of cinema. I used to hang around editing rooms and sound theatres after school. All of that was film knowledge I gained over time. By the end of class 12, it was almost like graduating from film school, because I learnt so much.”
