These days a friend of a hero or a sidekick is not seen as an insignificant character anymore. Not only do they play a catalyst in the story, they are making sure not to get typecast in successive films. They wait, skip similar characters and choose roles that offer them creative satisfaction. Be it Rahul Ramakrishna or Priyadarshi, all of them have broken stereotypes and experimented in lead roles in various genres and in bio pics. They have succeeded and how! No longer do people refer to them as comedians or call them for friend roles and they too don’t exult or show keen interest to do tiny characters in big star movies. The advantage is the OTT, people all over the country watch their work and producers give them fabulous roles. One such person who has shown patience and took the right decision to act as a hero in his second film is Yazurved. He was seen as one of the friends of Kiran Abbavaram in Rajavaru Rani Garu.
Yazurved is from Lingamparthi in East Godavari, Lingamparthi. The talented actor has moved to Hyderabad and is currently living in Manikonda. In a brief conversation with Y.Sunita Chowdhary of Klapboardpost.com, Yazurved says they were lucky to have the film released in November, the lockdown was announced in March. This was during the onset of Covid. He says, “I went home and six months passed by. Some projects were canceled due to Covid and I feel it all happened for a good purpose. I got an opportunity to play the lead. I was advised by my well wishers not to do insignificant roles. I remember, during lockdown, director Sudheer Verma said he heard a story and found it to be interesting. He wanted me to go through the narration. The director is Akula Kasi who works in director Sukumar’s team. He is also Sudheer Verma’s friend. I loved the story and we began shooting in December. It is interesting to note that when Kasi went to Sudheer Verma’s office and spoke about his film, he also showed me a picture from Raja Garu Rani Varu. He was inclined to rope in for the lead role and said he liked the Godavari slang. Sudheer Verma took it ahead. It is a road movie, based on real life incidents and has a cute love story.”
The actor states that the plot pertains to the 2020 lockdown. There are many who struggled and went through an arduous journey and he felt it will connect with a majority audience. He adds, “None of the people have forgotten it and if you see the film, you will be reminded of many things. It has a cute village love story and I like rural stories more than that which is set in an urban milieu. The title is Chittam Maharani and the heroine’s character mostly reminds one of Rashmika’s in Gita Govindam. About the director, he was associated with four of Sukumar’s projects and Dhruva is one of them.” Yazurved says after the release of Raja Garu Rani Varu, he was interestingly offered lead roles but didn’t take them up as he didn’t find them interesting. Now that this film is done, he has made up his mind to do lead roles only. He terms Kasi as a very good writer and director who shows an artist how to act which in turn makes the latter’s job easier.
Kasi’s father apparently is a professor, is also a writer and industry knows him as Master Garu. He had worked as ghost writer for Chandamama and Hanuman Junction and many Krishna Vamsi movies. Rachana Indran, a Kannada actress is the heroine. She worked in Love Mocktail and this is her first film in Telugu. Since her father is a Telugu man, she speaks the language fluently. Yazurved says he can’t reveal the gist as it could give away the entire story. The film has a Godavari backdrop and all the songs are montages. Cinematographer Vishwanath Reddy’s frames and lighting are beautiful. Hari Gowra who worked for Tungabhadra, Dear Megha scored music for this story. His background score for this is absolutely great. Our film will be the third. Producer Manikanta is the one who co-produced Color Photo. This is his first film.
