'Indian film industry is not divided by languages anymore'

Some interviews are fun as the chat develops. But this isn’t one among them as we have Jr NTR sitting right beside us. Three contrasting personalities — Rajamouli with an effervescent smile, the quiet Ram Charan and the happy-go-lucky Tarak, have come together to deliver one of India’s biggest films of 2022, RRR. Be it the trailer or the songs, they have been nothing short of a spectacle. However, Rajamouli had other plans. “After giving five years to the Baahubali universe, I wanted to make a light-hearted love film sans VFX,” Rajamouli laughs even before he could complete the sentence. It is because he reminisced about how he first shared it with his wife Rama (also the costume designer for RRR) and her reaction to it. “I told her that I want to make such a movie for which she replied, “who would even watch it if you make a romantic film”. It was a heart-wrenching moment. That is when I started penning a quadrangular love story, which is RRR. We have had several triangular love stories, but not this,” he adds.

When Rajamouli made a pan-Indian film like Baahubali, Prabhas was completely new to the mass audience in India and Rana was relatively new. With Jr NTR and Ram Charan in RRR produced by DVV Entertainments, India’s two big stars Rajamouli feels that they would still stay relevant to the audience in Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and Malayalam. “To me, they are not Tarak and Charan. When they come to my sets they are Komaram Bheem and Alluri Sitarama Raju. My job primarily as a filmmaker is to make them stay relevant so that the audience is convinced,” tells the filmmaker.

JR NTR joins the conversation and says, “Which is why he has made us dub in each of these languages. There are so many emotions in the film and a dubbing artist wouldn’t know them. Also, when you watch the movie you will realise that there won’t be any geographical tag attached to it.” The quiet Charan adds to Tarak’s point and says, “Moreover, the audience has started watching films without any language barriers in their minds. We are all Indian actors and not Tollywood, Kollywood or Sandalwood actors. Be it me or Tarak, Ajith sir, Vijay sir or Ravi Teja, we have moved out of the ‘wood’ zone.” Tarak compliments Charan for speaking that out and says, “Yes you are absolutely right. I don’t believe in these ‘woods’. We are all actors, who cater to the audience across the country and even to those who are away from it.”

As Rajamouli keeps looking at his actors, we ask him about working with them and how he balanced the performance out between these biggest box-office arch rivals. But the answer came from Tarak. “He squeezes you till he extracts the juice out of you,” he quips and passes the baton on to Rajamouli. “99 percent of the time I know what Tarak is going to deliver in a particular scene. I can even predict the movement of his facial muscles. Meanwhile, Ram Charan is unpredictable and he kept surprising me. They both have delivered stellar performances. So when I feel Tarak has overshadowed Charan in a scene, I push the latter to give his best. Throughout the runtime, you would see equally best performances from both,” says the director.

To have made a movie with a budget of Rs 400 crore, and to have cast stars like Alia Bhatt and Ajay Devgn, Rajamouli says the film has a couple of selling points. “Every 10 minutes you will be on the edge of your seat. Also, there is a strong emotion in it. I believe that we are strongly knitted by emotions. Even if I had made a smaller film, the emotion will still be the selling point of it,” he reckons. The film started before the pandemic, resumed shooting in the lockdown and is now releasing. Tarak talks about the lesson he learned while shooting for RRR. “I have learned to deal with things with more patience. When you ask if at some point I wanted to walk out of the film, I would say I felt it the very first day. Rajamouli is a perfectionist and he is the best at what he does,” he says. “Yes we have given three years to one film. We completely gave ourselves to Rajamouli and went by his vision. The effort is worth it. He has taken our careers to another level,” says Ram Charan.

There have been reports that say that Charan has charged a whopping Rs 100 crore for his film with Shankar. “Is it so? I would really be thankful to you if you could help me find that Rs 100 crore. No, that is not my remuneration for Shankar’s film,” laughs Ram Charan. “What? You never told me it was Rs 100 crore. We will discuss this in private with Charan,” says Tarak.

Though we could easily predict who could have been the most well-behaved actor on the sets, we wanted it to hear from the horse’s mouth. Rajamouli’s finger points at Ram Charan. “What? No, I was the well-behaved actor on the sets,” jumps Tarak from his chair. “Yes Tarak. After finishing a shot, you would crack a joke and make the entire unit laugh. My problem wasn’t about you cracking jokes. But I never knew when the unit would be back in the mood to get back to work. They won’t stop laughing at all. It would go on and on,” Rajamouli spills the beans. There were also reports that Tarak and Charan at a point in time ignored Alia Bhatt and went on to continue with their bromance. “Imagine these two ignoring India’s heartthrob,” says Rajamouli. “No, it’s not that we ignored her. We were bromancing. Charan and I were always good friends. Our friendship has gotten better,” concludes Tarak.