My father will bounce back

Says Sumanth Ashwin as he gets talking about MS Raju’s slump, ‘Chakkiligintha’, Hudhud and more…

On a roll with two back-to-back hits, Sumanth Ashwin is eagerly awaiting the release of ‘Chakkiligintha’, directed by Sukumar’s close pal Vema Reddy. The young actor says that the moment the director narrated the script to him, he immediately felt it will strike a chord with the audience. “There are some films which make you feel that they will score at the box-office even before going on to floors and ‘Chakkiligintha’ was one such film that I was sure of from the moment I heard the narration from Vema. After I watched the first half of the film, I wanted to take my friends to a coffee shop to discuss about it. I see youngsters too echo my feeling once they catch the film,” he believes. “It’s a complex subject, but told in a simple way. It’s an original body of work and has no references to world cinema.”

The actor plays Adi, a basketball player in the film. “I participated in workshops for ‘Anthaku Mundu Aa Taruvatha’ whereas for ‘Lovers’ I was spontaneous, but it turned out to be a difficult task to crack Adi. Only after I heard the script multiple times and participated in a couple of photo shoots did I get a hang of the character,” he recalls.

The actor is upbeat about shooting for the film at a college in Shamshabad. The actor shares that the task of getting permission from the college authorities to shoot turned out to be easier said than done. “The film required us to shoot in a plush college for 25 days. We zeroed in cities like Mumbai and New Delhi and some people event suggested Bangkok for the college, but when the producers messaged me the pictures of MIT college, I was taken aback. I was told that ‘2 States’ was shot in Delhi MIT,” he says, adding, “The principal initially didn’t give us the consent, but after he read the synopsis of the film, he called the head office to give us the go-ahead; the brief story had managed to impress him. Ours is the first Telugu film to be shot there and after we finished, some big producers approached the college for permission with a fancy price, but the principal declined their offers.”

A song and a sequence were also shot in Visakhapatnam for the film – this after Hudhud. “Though we wanted to shoot in the steel city, some people suggested that we recreate the same portions in Kerala or Goa, but Vema was adamant that he wants to shoot in the city. Barely a week after Hudhud wrecked havoc, Vema and his team did a recce of the place and found it conducive for the shoot. When I visited the city later, even I felt that it hadn’t lost its charm at all,” he adds.

He continues, “Dad was lauded for the way he presented Araku in ‘Nuvvosatanante Nenoddantana’ and I get a feeling that a similar compliment is in store for us – for the way we shot the number in Vizag.”

Speaking about his producer dad MS Raju, he says he will bounce back. “If you look at his career, he has delivered hits on the trot and followed it up with a dud. In cricketing terms, they say form is temporary and class is permanent and dad belongs to the latter. He still judges a film’s fate appropriately; he is hooked to the cinema 24x7 and is into writing most of the times. When I’m not shooting I hang out with my sister. But my father prefers to stay at home watching films; he still watches four films a day,” signs off Sumanth.