My wife specialises in Mexican cuisine: Allari Naresh

Flops are a thing of past; Allari Naresh plans to get back into winning ways with ‘James Bond’. He speaks about the film, his life after marriage and better half

With his last releases – ‘Laddu Babu’, ‘Jump Jilani’, ‘Brother of Bommali’ and ‘Bandipotu’ – going out like the briefest of candles at the box office, actor Allari Naresh has got into introspection mode. “Success and failures are a part of the industry,” he says on a diplomatic note, adding, “The effect of both success and failure will stay with you for a period of three days at the maximum.

If you deliver a hit, you will be pressurised to follow suit with your next, and if you deliver a dud, you have to introspect on what went wrong. As a matter of fact, I know that if you fail it’s not the end of the road. Aamir Khan too had a streak of flops in his career. Delivering hits on the trot is difficult because each individual’s taste varies from the other.

“I’ve been analysing the errors that I’ve committed with my past films and I’m learning from them.” Reflecting on what went wrong, he confides, “I experimented too much. In case of ‘Laddu Babu’, audience expected a hilarious comedy entertainer whereas we wanted to explore the travails of an obese person. Somehow, we failed to strike a balance.

Audience expectations on my films increased manifold, after ‘Sudigadu’. They wanted each and every scene of my film to evoke laughter. And there was a time when I was worried about doing an emotional sequence, lest they dislike it.”

The actor, nonetheless, is ready to take the blame. “I don’t want to blame any one person in particular. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort and I green-lit a project after liking a script. And if someone has to be blamed, it is I for choosing the wrong script.”

No wonder his next film is going to be a typical Naresh slapstick comedy drama with witty dialogues. The actor shares the storyline of ‘James Bond’, “I’m terrified at the sight of blood in the film whereas my wife thrives on it. There’s a saying, ‘Behind every successful man, there is a women’, but over here, she is the reason for all his failures.”

The actor has entered wedlock with Virupa a couple of months ago. Ask him whether he had enough time to know her since the marriage took place within a space of 25 days after getting engaged, he avers, “I came to know about her likes and dislikes just before marriage.

Now that she is staying with me, I am getting to know her better. She comes from a background, which has nothing to do with films. The last film that she saw in a theatre was ‘Collectorgaari Alludu’. Imagine that? She has barely seen my films on TV. She’s now getting used to my life. May be, one year down the lane, I will know her completely (laughs).”

An architect by profession, Virupa, says Naresh, has bid adieu to her job after marriage. “She’s got bored of it as she had been employed with the same firm for eight years. She wanted to take a break of 18 months post which, she is planning to set up her own company.”

Seems like the actor’s wife has found her way to his heart through his stomach - “Besides our traditional Telugu cuisine, she is good at cooking Mexican and Chinese. I asked her to learn cooking Thai too, since I love it,” he smiles.

By Nagaraj Goud